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| y Ma D SDI - Quo Vadis? INSPIRE a Participatory - Towards Digital Earth US to the Future: Back NSDI Shows the Way OVERNANCE & INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE AT ndustr RL 07 | ISSNE 07 2277–3134 ISSU » me 04 VOLu » y 2014 ar ru
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IGF Double Ad.indd 3 1/30/2014 9:43:16 AM GEO-012_Geospatial World_Feb 2014 Print Ad_7.75in x 10.25in_0114.indd 1 1/23/2014 8:28:40 AM February 2014 • Vol 4 • Issue 7 Inside
THEME: GOVERNANCE AND INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE Executive Space 22 Vladimir Gershenzon Founder & Board Member, ScanEx Cover Story
24 SDI - Quo Vadis? Feature: Food Security Prof Arup Dasgupta 68 A Thought for Food Case Studies on SDIs Jim Baumann
32 INSPIRE: Towards a Participatory Digital Earth, Max Craglia 07 Editorial
37 The Three Gears of NGIS in Korea 08 News Byong Nam Choe & Moo Ik Park 19 ProductWatch 42 Back to the Future: USA 70 The ICA Angle
46 A Clustre of SDIs: Spain 72 Picture This Antonio F. Rodríguez 74 Events 54 A Collaborative Model to Decentralise Information: Chile Interview Articles 56 Sdi Strengthens G-Governance in 40 Doe Tae-HO Abu Dhabi Deputy Minister, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure 60 Towards Smarter Services & Transport, Korea Jim Dobbs 58 A Smart City Indeed: Bogota 50 Derek Clarke Jasmith A. Tamayo B 64 Tracking Development via Chief Director, Surveys & Mapping and National Effective Aid Management Geospatial Information, Department of Rural Samantha Custer Development & Land Reforms, South Africa
Disclaimer Owner, Publisher & Printer Sanjay Kumar Geospatial World Geospatial World does not necessarily subscribe to the Printed at M. P. Printers B - 220, Phase-II, Geospatial Media and Communications Pvt. Ltd. views expressed in the publication. All views expressed Noida - 201 301, Gautam Budh Nagar (UP) India (formerly GIS Development Pvt. Ltd.) in this issue are those of the contributors. Geospatial Publication Address A - 92, Sector - 52, A - 145, Sector - 63, Noida, India World is not responsible for any loss to anyone due to the Gautam Budh Nagar, Noida, India Tel + 91-120-4612500 Fax +91-120-4612555 / 666 information provided. The edition contains 76 pages including cover Price: INR 150/US$ 15
Aida Opoku Mensah Bryn Fosburgh CHAIRMAN Special Advisor, Post 2015 Sector Vice-President, M P Narayanan Development Agenda, UN Barbara Ryan Executive Committee Dawn J. Wright Publisher Economic Commisssion Secretariat Director, Group Member, Chief Scientist, Sanjay Kumar for Africa on Earth Observations Trimble Navigation Esri Publications Team Derek Clarke Dorine Burmanje Chief Director-Survey and Chair-Executive Board, Managing Editor Mapping & National Geospatial Cadastre, Land Registry and Ed Parsons Prof. Arup Dasgupta Information, Rural Development Mapping Agency (Kadaster), Geospatial Technologist, Greg Bentley Editor — Building & Energy & Land Reform, South Africa The Netherlands Google CEO, Bentley Systems Geoff Zeiss Dr. Hiroshi Murakami Prof. Josef Strobl Editor — Agriculture Director-General of Chair, Department of Mark Noort Planning Department, Prof. Ian Dowman Geoinformatics, Juergen Dold Editor — Geospatial World Weekly (Hon) Advisory Board Geospatial Information First Vice President, University of Salzburg, President Authority of Japan ISPRS Austria Hexagon Geosystems Dr. Hrishikesh Samant Executive Editor Lisa Campbell Mark Reichardt Bhanu Rekha Kamal K Singh Vice President, President and CEO, Deputy Executive Editor Chairman and CEO, Engineering & Open Geospatial Matthew O’Connell Anusuya Datta Rolta Group Infrastructure, Autodesk Consortium CEO, Adhoc Holdings Product Manager Mohd Al Rajhi Ramon Pastor Harsha Vardhan Madiraju Asst Deputy Minister for Vice-President and Sub-Editor Land & Surveying, General Manager, Large Stephen Lawler Ridhima Kumar Ministry of Municipal & Format Printing Business, Chief Technology Officer, Dr Swarna Subba Rao Rural Affairs, Saudi Arabia Hewlett-Packard Bing Maps, Microsoft Surveyor General of India Graphic Designer Debjyoti Mukherjee Vanessa Lawrence Circulation Manager Director General and Amit Shahi Chief Executive, Ordnance Survey, UK Geospatial World February 2014 / 5 Compact Robotic Total Station Designed to be both Versatile and Agile
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Topcon Positioning Middle East and Africa FZE E-mail : [email protected] Website : www.topconpositioningmea.com From the Editor’s Desk
Democratising SDIs, Empowering Citizens Prof Arup Dasgupta Managing Editor [email protected]
hile going through the articles on SDI their own interest, and in the interest of maintaining a in this issue I was struck by the im- responsive and equitable democracy”. Those countries mense contribution of two entities that that seek to restrict data access in the name of security have shaped SDI. Max Craglia of the need to heed this reasoning because open government European Commission’s INSPIRE in- that embraces transparency in decision making is the Witiative hit it bang on when he termed SDI as the child hallmark of democracy. of the Internet. Indeed, global access to data would not Involvement of citizens in SDI is not only as seek- have been possible without it. The second is the Open ers of information but also as providers of information. Geospatial Consortium (OGC), whose championing of The use of volunteered geospatial information from open data systems and adoption of Internet capabil- neogeographers and others must be encouraged and ities through its Web Services Standards to enable used as a valid data source for SDIs. There must be data discovery, binding and operations has introduced more Google Mapathon type of efforts. When it comes a quiet revolution which helped make SDI a reality. to planning development decisions, the views of the Both entities share many common traits like openness; stakeholders must be included, and this necessarily both are driven by volunteers; both rely on consensus comes from the bottom of the pyramid and not the top. and both choose to follow a golden mean eschewing Citizen involvement and transparent government can controversy as far as possible. become more than buzzwords if the SDIs truly begin Openness is a virtue that all SDIs should embrace to serve citizens. with respect to data. Many have held that data for Another buzz acronym is PPP. Governments mouth public good must be free of cost and easily available. this as they involve industry in realising SDI, though Government-collected data should be available at in reality it is nothing more than the age-old tendering the cost of media because the cost of collection has model. Undoubtedly, SDI efforts by governments are already been paid for by the citizens. Derek Clarke lucrative business opportunities for the geospatial of NGI, South Africa, opines that pricing data for industry but the real money is in serving the citizens, achieving financial independence is possibly the the bottom of the pyramid, by creating applications worst move an SDI can make as it will indirectly deny that co-create a personalised experience for each access to those who need it but cannot afford it. In citizen customer. There are thousands of govern- a hard hitting article in Sensors and Systems, Bruce ment departments but there are billions of potential Joffe of GIS Consultants has put forward the idea citizen-customers. That will be the real Private Public that democracy depends upon access by the public to Partnership. government geodata. Fair property taxation, consistent zoning and rational property insurance rates are “the types of questions concerned citizens may ask, both in
Geospatial World February 2014 / 7 Americas News
Business ‘US is the highest spender on military GPS/GNSS’ DigitalGlobe to enter The US government is the high- geospatial big data market est spender on military GPS/GNSS DigitalGlobe is planning to enter the navigation, and is responsible for estimated $40-billion geospatial big 42.9% of the global military GNSS data market in an effort to expand devices market, according to a report its business. Company executives published by Reportstack. The report told investors at a Denver conference on ‘The Global Military GPS/GNSS that it is planning to grow beyond Market 2013-2023’ offers a detailed being a satellite imagery provider. analysis of the global military GPS/ “Geospatial big data is at the heart GNSS market over the next 10 years, of our transformation from imagery alongside potential market oppor- to information,” said Jeffrey Tarr, tunities to enter the industry, using DigitalGlobe President and CEO. detailed market size forecasts. Other major spenders in this sector include Apple acquires 3D sensor Russia, the UK, China and India, ac- company PrimeSense cording to the report. A major factor
Apple has bought Israel-based Raytheon PR Newswire, Courtesy: driving this market is the integration PrimeSense Ltd, a developer of chips MAGR 2000-S24 miniaturised airborne of satellite navigation technology with GPS receiver that enable three-dimensional ma- other navigation systems, such as the chine vision. The acquisition signals an Indefinite Delivery-Indefinite inertial navigation system (INS) and gesture-controlled technologies Quantity (IDIQ) contract awarded to gyro as GPS devices are to be used in in new devices from the maker of the company in September 2013 by order to decipher data correctly. iPhones and iPads. The Israeli media the US Air Force Space and Missile said Apple paid about $350 million Systems Center. The open architec- Apple files patent for more for PrimeSense, whose technol- ture design of MAGR 2000-S24 al- intelligent maps app ogy powers the gesture control in lows modernisation and upgrade of The US Patent and Trademark Of- Microsoft Corp’s Xbox Kinect gaming GPS functional capabilities through fice has published Apple’s patent system. It was the simple replacement of a single for an improved maps application. the second ac- electronics module. The ‘Interactive Map’ application quisition of an $350mn is an electronic map which displays Israeli company Paid for Pitney Bowes, Twitter sign several layers of information with by Apple in less PrimeSense location intelligence deal highlighted landmarks. Users can than two years. Pitney Bowes has sealed a deal with overlay certain types of information Apple bought flash storage chip Twitter to provide location intel- on the map by selecting more spe- maker Anobit in January 2012. ligence solutions for the latter’s cific categories. These layers would mobile platform. The deal has been be derived from other mapping ser- Raytheon bags miniature signed for providing location intel- vices as well as third-party websites. GPS receivers contract ligence solutions to Twitter world- Users can choose to see highways, Raytheon has received a $15.8-mil- wide. “Twitter will use the company’s retail stores, city parks, airports and lion contract for its MAGR 2000-S24 location intelligence technology to even weather and they can then miniaturised airborne GPS receiver. support location sharing in tweets,” view these separately or all together The order, which includes new pro- said James Buckley, Senior Vice Presi- in a composite view. What really sets duction and sustenance of existing dent and General Manager Location this possible patent apart is that it systems, is the first under Intelligence, Pitney Bowes. allows users to finetune their views
8 / Geospatial World February 2014 Americas News
to make it easier to separate similar things such as major highways and Miscellaneous side streets on different layers. SkyBox beams first high-resolution video of the planet DHS awards contract for After releasing the first images from its SkySat-1 satellite, SkyBox Imaging geospatial services has now shared the Ardent Management Consulting has world’s first commer- been awarded a five-year blanket cial, high-resolution, purchase agreement to support HD video of earth. programmes throughout the US SkySat-1, which was Department of Homeland Security launched in Novem- (DHS) with geospatial and common ber 2013, captured operating picture (COP) technology up to 90-second vid- requirements. The contract is worth eo clips at 30 frames $98 million. Under the agreement, per second to create ArdentMC will provide comprehen- high-resolution views sive geospatial enterprise technical of Tokyo, Bangkok, support services, including geospatial Baltimore, Las Vegas programme and and Aleppo, Syria. project manage- The footage reveals $98mn ment, techni- details down to the Size of the cal planning, metre-scale, such as cars moving on roads and vessels travelling through DHS contract engineering and shipping lanes — all from a satellite positioned 600 km above the planet. implementation, SkySat-1 is 20 times smaller than traditional satellites, weighing just 100 analytics and processing, enterprise kg. The California-based startup intends to launch 23 more satellites in the and technical architecture, data years ahead to provide timely access to high-resolution imagery. processing and management, and operations and maintenance. is expected to close by July 15, 2014, types of apps soldiers really wanted Verisk analytics to acquire subject to the completion of custom- initially focused on high-resolution EagleView Technology ary closing conditions. map imagery in the palm of their Verisk Analytics has signed an agree- hand,” said Doran Michels, DARPA ment to acquire EagleView Technol- Miscellaneous programme manager. ogy Corporation (EVT), the parent company of Pictometry International DARPA’s apps transform ‘NSA tracks 5 bn cellphone and Eagle View Technologies. The battlefield operations location records daily’ acquisition will accelerate Verisk`s DARPA has recently come up with The National Security Agency position as a key provider of data, transformative apps programme (NSA) of US traces over 5 billion analytics, and decision support solu- that provides digital imagery to cellphones everyday, mapping the tions based on aerial imagery. The dismounted troops through secured relationship among the various cell- purchase price Android devices. It also aims to build phone users based on their location, of $650 million a library of secure military apps that revealed a report published in The will be paid in $650mn are as simple to access and use as Washington Post. According to the cash to stock- To be paid for their commercial counterparts, even report, the US agency accumulated holders of EVT. EagleView Tech in the most austere and discon- humongous amount of location data The transaction nected tactical environments. “The everyday by tapping into cables
Geospatial World February 2014 / 9 Americas News
that join mobile networks around levels in a bid to better understand the world. The NSA collects this the greenhouse gas that contributes location and travel habit data to to global warming. In November, do “target development” — to find NASA plans to launch the Soil Mois- unknown associates of targets it ture Active Passiva (SMAP) satellite already knows about. The NSA used that will measure water levels in the a software programme called CO- soil. Two other instruments are to TRAVELLER, which churns through be sent to the orbiting International the vast location data of billions of Space Station where they will be cellphone users and establishes the installed to take stock of happenings “patterns of relationships between back home. them by where their phones go”. “That can reveal a previously un- 6,000 natural gas leaks in known terrorist suspect, in guilt by Washington’s aging pipes cellphone-location association, for According to a study published in instance,” the report adds. the journal Environmental Science & Technology, there are nearly 6,000 US state unveils an online natural gas leaks under the streets oil and gas mapping tool Ground-based radars for UAVs of Washington DC. Scientists from The Department of Environmental Duke University and Boston Univer- Protection (DEP), Pennsylvania, has Hood in Texas, Fort Riley in Kansas, sity say that they have discovered announced a new online oil and gas Fort Stewart in Georgia, Fort Camp- more than 5,893 leaks from aging mapping tool on its website. The bell in Kentucky, and Fort Drum in natural gas pipelines under DC. The online mapping tool displays the lo- New York. “The army completed a team mapped out gas leaks under cation of wells across Pennsylvania preliminary design review of the all 1,500 miles of road within DC and allows users to search and view GBSAA network in November. The using a high-precision Picarro G2301 specific types of wells by county, service is now moving ahead with Cavity Ring-Down Spectrometer such as conventional gas, unconven- installing the system at five sites installed in a car. Tests confirmed tional gas, oil or coal bed methane where the army’s largest UAV, the that the isotopic chemical signa- wells. Users are also able to filter MQ-1C Gray Eagle, is flown,” said tures of methane and ethane found search results based on the status Viva Austin, product director for the of the well by selecting active, army’s Unmanned Systems Airspace plugged or abandoned. After search Integration Concepts (USAIC). filters are applied, users will have the ability to view wells via satellite NASA’s upcoming photo view, topographic map view missions to focus on Earth or animated map view. This year NASA is turning its eyes back to Earth with five planned US Army to install ground space missions to take a look at the based UAV radar home planet. The first mission, the The US Army plans to install a new Global Precipitation Measurement ground-based sense and avoid (GB- Core Observatory, is to launch in SAA) network at five installations by February. It will study global rain
2016 to ensure its UAVs can decon- and snowfall. In July, the Orbiting University Duke Courtesy: flict with other aircraft in domestic Carbon Observatory-2 satellite will Satellite image of the District of Colombia with bar charts showing where natural gas leaks were located. airspace. The five sites are Fort begin measuring carbon dioxide
10 / Geospatial World February 2014 Americas News
in the survey closely matched that of pipeline gas. Canada
Canada to make territorial claim for North Pole Canada plans to make a claim to the North Pole in an effort to assert its sovereignty in the resource-rich Arc- tic. The federal government plans to send its scientists back into the field for mapping a giant undersea moun- tain range which could secure the sea floor under the top of the world for the Maple Leaf. “The Lomonosov Rio de Janeiro airport Ridge wasn’t fully mapped by my department earlier. Therefore, for this Rio airport to adopt air satellite into space. The Krysaor extensive mapping project I think it is navigation system satellite was launched aboard a important to map the entire Arctic, in- Santos Dumont airport in Rio de Russian-built Dnepr RS-20B rocket. cluding on the ridge,” said John Baird, Janeiro will start using an air naviga- The satellite is equipped with a Foreign Affairs Minister, Canada. tion system that will reduce travel high resolution video camera. It has time from other airports to Santos advanced solar panels, and a high- Brazil Dumont. This system is expected to speed digital broadcasting system decrease the noise from takeoff and that can transmit data a thousand Brazilian state to develop landing, save fuel and reduce the times faster. registry of rural properties number of times when the airport The State Secretariat for the Environ- is closed due to bad weather. The Tracasa bags $17.5-mn ment and Water Resources (Semar) technology uses the concept of cartography deal in Ecuador of Piaui has launched the Rural performance-based RNP (Required The Navarre public company, Environmental Registry project to Navigation Performance) navigation. Tracasa has been selected to provide integrate environmental information It requires the installation of specific cartographic and data processing of rural properties. The project aims devices on the aircraft, crew training services for a 120,000 sq km area in to create a database which will help and adequacy of control of air navi- Ecuador. The amount of the tender, in monitoring the environmental and gation to increase the accuracy of worth $17.5 million, makes this one economic planning of rural properties descent operations. The system will of the biggest cartographic projects to combat deforestation. “From now initially be used in Santos Dumont in 2013. The aim of this project, on, Piaui will rely on a database of sat- and will be later expanded to other developed by the Ecuadorian Gov- ellite images that will locate, identify airports in the country. ernment with the Inter-American and georeference rural properties. Development Bank, is to implement Besides environmental management Ecuador an efficient cadastre and rural land tool, the Environmental Registry can registration system in the Ecuador. consolidate itself as the gateway to Second nano-satellite Tracasa will contribute its knowledge the largest programme for combating launched and technology to achieve this mod- deforestation,” said Macambira Dalton, Ecuador’s Civilian Space Agency ernisation milestone in the Central Secretary of Semar. (EXA) has launched the second nano- American country.
Geospatial World February 2014 / 11 Europe News
Belgium Geographical Institute) has signed a contract to implement SiNErGIC (the EU funding for Galileo, National System for the Use and Man- EGNOS projects agement of Cadastral Information) to The European Parliament has ap- register all the urban and rural prop- proved funding for the region’s two erties in the country. The SiNErGIC satellite navigation programmes— system aims to document the exact Galileo and the European Geosta- delimitations of real estate to unify tionary Navigation Overlay Service the existing and new cadastral infor- (EGNOS) — until 2020. The European mation and also to allow a uniform Union will spend €7 billion ($9.4 management and processing of that billion) to complete the satellite information. The system also aims to navigation infrastructure and launch be compatible with other electronic the services. “Galileo and EGNOS systems and will be accessible to civil are an investment for our future. servants as well as to citizens and The opportunities and benefits companies. that these systems will bring to the EuroGeographics Courtesy: European economy and citizens are Ingrid Vanden Berghe, President of Brussels EuroGeographics, (right) presents a very significant,” said Antonio Tajani, topographic atlas of Belgium to European Commission Vice Presi- Catherine Stihler, MEP (left). Switzerland joins Galileo dent. The overall economic impact of navigation programme Galileo and EGNOS is estimated to be economic development. By standard- Switzerland has signed a coopera- around €90 billion over the next 20 ising geoinformation from European tion agreement to participate in the years. In addition to the opening up countries, the European Location Galileo and EGNOS programme, the of new business Framework will enable the free pillars of the EU’s Global Navigation opportunities, €7 bn movement of interoperable data. Satellite System (GNSS). Switzerland everyday users It will also enable cost savings by will now financially participate in will also be able Funding maximising the reuse of public data the programme, and will retroac- to enjoy increas- approved by EU and avoiding the development of du- tively contrib- ingly accurate plicate services. “Cross-border inter- ute €80 million satellite navigation services with operable maps are very important to for the period €80 mn every new satellite launch. Europe and we can already see the 2008-2013. Contribution by contribution Europe’s national map- The agree- Switzerland Maps for European location ping and cadastral authorities make ment, signed framework unveiled to the sound delivery of European in Brussels, also covers cooperation Plans to bring together location data policies. Their impact is far reaching,” in areas such as security, export from different countries to provide said Catherine Stihler Member of control, standards, certification and one source of authoritative Maps for European Parliament (MEP). industrial cooperation. This coop- Europe have been unveiled to MEPs. eration will not only help to provide The European Location Framework Portugal better results for the EU’s satellite will deliver reliable geoinforma- navigation services, but also open tion — including cross-border maps Land registration project up a series of business opportuni- — and have a wide range of uses, for up-to-date cadastre ties for small and medium sized including emergency response, The Directorate-General for Territory enterprises, both from Switzerland environmental management and (DGT — formerly the Portuguese and the EU.
12 / Geospatial World February 2014 Europe News
France Ukraine Ireland
Deal for multi-satellite Ukraine to develop spatial $21 mn investment in Direct Receiving Station data infrastructure marine mapping project Astrium has signed an agreement with Ukraine is gearing up to participate Ireland’s Minister for Natural Re- GeoNorth for multi-mission Direct in European projects to develop sources, Fergus O’Dowd, has set out Receiving Station (DRS), with high- geospatial data infrastructure in details of upcoming projects in the resolution and very high-resolution accordance with European guide- National Marine Mapping Programme optical and radar satellite imagery lines and directives. “This collabo- (INFOMAR), and pledged government capabilities. The deal gives GeoNorth ration will help establish relations commitment of €15 million ($21 the unparalleled capability of priority with both developers and users of million) for the next five years, for the tasking the Astrium Services constella- geospatial information to promote continuation of valuable resource for tions to capture imagery and downlink long-term mutual support,” said Ser- marine research and development in data to its processing terminal. It pro- gey Timchenko, Chairman, Ukraine’s Ireland and beyond. Covering some vides for a multi-satellite DRS that will State Agency of Land Resources. 125,000 sq km of underwater territo- draw on the SPOT (5 and 6), Pléiades EuroGeographics will also provide ry, the INFOMAR project is producing (1A and 1B), TerraSAR-X and TanDEM- advice and methodological assis- new mapping and integrated products X satellites — with resolutions across tance to the State Agency of Land covering the Irish maritime space. optical and radar products ranging Resources of Ukraine in terms of It provides seabed surveys which is from 0.25m to 40m. legal regulation of national geospa- used for planning offshore renewable tial data infrastructure. energy projects. Serbia
National infrastructure of geospatial data project Denmark The Republic Geodetic Authority of Serbia has implemented a project on Enormous aquifer discovered under Greenland ice sheet national infrastructure of geospatial Buried underneath compacted snow and ice in Greenland lies a large liquid data and the remote sensing centre water reservoir that has been mapped by researchers using data from for Serbia. The project is valued at NASA’s Operation IceBridge airborne Courtesy: Ludovic Brucker around €16.24 million and implement- campaign. Glaciologists found the ed in cooperation with IGN France aquifer while drilling in southeast International Greenland in 2011 to study snow consortium and €16.24 mn accumulation. Two of their ice cores Astrium EADS. were dripping water when the scien- The project Allocated for tists lifted them to the surface, despite aims to set up a geospatial data air temperatures of minus 4F degree. national centre project The researchers later used NASA’s Op- for geospatial data infrastructure and eration Icebridge radar data to confine remote sensing in Serbia, in keeping the limits of the water reservoir, which with European standards, through in- spreads over 69,930 sq km. The water stitutional cooperation of government in the aquifer has the potential to raise bodies. It was carried out on grounds the global sea level by 0.4 mm. of the bilateral agreement between Water draining from a core extracted 40 feet below the surface of the ice sheet Serbia and France.
Geospatial World February 2014 / 13 Asia News
Vietnam spacecraft, together with three other contractors NASA satellites. The satellite was will work on $11mn New geospatial database put into orbit and it re-sent signals increasing for Soc Trang province back to earth stations in Japan. the GLONASS’ contract to secure Officials from the Rural Develop- Pico Dragon is 10x10x11.35 cm and immunity to GLONASS ment and the German Society for weighs nearly 1 kg. It is assigned to electronic International Cooperation and capture images of the earth, collect warfare. Under the plan, VNIIFTRI the Ministry of Agriculture have space environment data and test and NAVIS will set up a facility to recently handed over a geospatial communication systems. test the system’s resistance by mim- database to the administration of icking noise that can jam satellite Soc Trang province of Vietnam. Philippines signals aimed at land- and air-based The geospatial database compiles GLONASS receivers. It aims to teach authoritative data from various Remapping initiative the system to distinguish noise from government agencies in the country. shows forest cover increase signals and bypass it. Additionally, it also contains maps The Cordillera region in Philippines which date back to 1904. The data- has marked an increase in its forest Singapore base will provide decision-makers cover from 2003 to 2010, accord- with historical maps that would help ing to the research done by the Singapore to develop 3D them trace back the development National Mapping and Resource national topographic model of the coastline and to identify suit- Information Authority (NAMRIA). The Singapore Land Authority (SLA) able and site-specific measures for “NAMRIA found out that Cordil- is leading a nation-level initiative to coastal protection. lera’s forest cover increased after develop and maintain 3D National they conducted a satellite remap- Topographic Model to facilitate Micro satellite PicoDragon ping of the country’s forest cover the efficient exchange and use of sends first signals in 2010, compared to the mapping topographic information among list in 2003,” said Clarence Baguilat, agencies. SLA will create a 3D Department of Environment and topographic database which will Natural Resources Regional Execu- keep the data constantly up-to-date. tive Director. A key dataset produced from this project will be the National Digital Russia Elevation Model (DEM). Already, SLA has received many requests from Russia launches project Agencies on this for their planning, to secure GLONASS operational and developmental The Russian Ministry of Defence needs. “When completed, the 3D has launched a project to secure National Topographic Model and GLONASS, the country’s satellite the National DEM will enhance our navigation system, against disrup- understanding of our environment Courtesy: VNSC Courtesy: PicoDragon satellite tions of signals by enemies. The so that we can make better use of The Vietnam National Satellite Cen- ministry has handed a $11-million our limited resources in a sustain- tre (VNSC) has received first signals contract to two local entities — the able manner. All this will help the from its micro-satellite PicoDragon. Russian Scientific Research Institute government provide better services The micro-satellite was sent to the of Physical Technical and Radio- and solutions to our citizens,” said International Space Station (ISS) by technical Measurements (VNIIFTRI) Ng Siau Yong, Director of the Geo- Japan’s Kounotori-4 (HTV-4) cargo and NAVIS navigation systems. The spatial Division at SLA.
14 / Geospatial World February 2014 Asia News
Malaysia Data Infrastructure (NSDI). NSDI aims system by 2020 and make it accurate to provide and integrate geographi- to within centimetres. The Chinese Student volunteers map cally referenced data produced by system has 16 city on OpenStreetMap various government agencies and de- satellites so Kota Kinabalu has become the first partments and make it easily acces- far serving the 30 city in the country to be mapped on sible in a user-friendly online portal. Asia-Pacific and Satellites by OpenStreetMap (OSM). The com- “Once the policies are in place, we the number is 2020 prehensive map was the result of a will launch a geoportal so that citi- expected to grow mapping competition between five zens can easily access authoritative, to 30 by 2020. Currently, the system schools. The purpose of the com- consistent and updated maps online. can reach an error margin as low as petition was to introduce the latest This will enable people to discover, 5 metres in trials and can be further community web mapping technology share and use geospatial information improved to within centimetres to to students and create awareness and services in ways never before compete with the dominant US GPS, about the importance of geographic possible,” said P.M.P. Udayakantha, officials said. information as well as create a good Senior Assistant Secretary and Senior quality OSM for Kota Kinabalu. Deputy Surveyor General at the Dubai Department of Survey. Sri Lanka State-of-the-art 3D city China model in Abu Dhabi Survey dept gets nod to The Abu Dhabi City Municipality has build NSDI project Beidou navigation system started the implementation of the The Survey Department of Sri Lanka aims for cm-level accuracy 3D Model Project for the Emirate. has recently received a Cabinet ap- China is planning to expand its The estimated cost of the project proval to build the National Spatial homegrown Beidou navigation is $25 million and implemented in collaboration with the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council and $25mn India other authori- Allocated for 3D ties. A 3D map city model NRSC unveils new data offerings of Abu Dhabi at user meet will be developed to enhance the The National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) has unveiled government’s ability to effectively new data products and updates to the existing services manage its land plots and buildings. at the User Interaction Meet 2014 held in Hyderabad Indian firm Rolta has been awarded recently. Releasing new products and services for its us- the contract to develop the model. ers and providing information on the upcoming services, Dr. V.K. Dadhwal, Director, NRSC said these new prod- Dubai municipality unveils ucts will keep in pace with the demand for application- electronic map app NRSC Chief Dr V.K. Dadhwal lights the specific products, that can be accessed online and can be Dubai municipality’s electronic lamp to inaugurate the User Meet augmented with field data. Dr. V.S. Hegde, CMD of Antrix map application ‘Makani’ has been Corporation talked about the changing scenario of earth observation as users launched and is available for Apple increasingly demand sub-metre data and quick availability and easy access to and Android stores. “With Makani data. He also said that the future EO satellites would have the capability to application, people can find any supply high-resolution data with improved revisit times. location in Dubai within one metre, which is more accurate than other
Geospatial World February 2014 / 15 Asia News
Courtesy: EIAST First images from DubaiSat 2 guided wing kits and Kaman will cre- released ate detonators for the air-to-ground The Emirates Institution for bombs. The GPS-guided bomb will Advanced Science and Tech- allow the air force to carry out nology’s (EIAST) DubaiSat precision attacks day and night, and 2 Earth observation sat- enhance its joint strike capabilities. ellite has been success- GPS-guided bombs can reach their fully deployed in orbit targets despite weather changes. and all systems have been tested and veri- Bahrain fied. The satellite’s first image, taken of CIO signs MoU with Seer Bani Yas Island Indian university in Abu Dhabi, was The Central Informatics Organisa- captured approx 24 tion (CIO), Bahrain has signed a hours after launch. The memorandum of understanding satellite was launched in (MoU) with Amity University, India. November2013. EIAST re- Eng. Khalid A. Hameed Al Hammadi, leased images from DubaiSat Acting Director of GIS Directorate at 2 taken from all over the world CIO highlighted that the agreement in 1-meter resolution. has materialised upon mutual desire
Burj Khalifa as seen by DubaiSat 2 to cooperate in general fields such as technical support, training, remote location finders,” said Abdul Hakim every location, including government sensing fields and other related Malik, Director of GIS Department at organisations, hospitals, parks, com- projects related to spatial Informa- Dubai Municipality. The application mercial buildings, houses, factories, tion and GIS. uses Dubai Coordinates, a project warehouses, etc. The number or undertaken by Dubai Municipality GIS coordinates will help in locating Pakistan to improve location finding in the places and people more easily as emirate. “A 10-digit number has Dubai does not have a traditional ad- Centre for land record been given to each building and dressing system,” added Malik. computerisation unveiled A land record computerisation Korea centre was recently established in the Lahore cantonment. The aim Boeing, Kaman to build of this centre is to speed up the GPS-guided weapons procedure of getting property and Aerospace companies Boeing and land plots related work done. The Kaman have been selected to system will become fully functional develop GPS-guided weapons for in all districts of the province. The South Korea’s KF-16 and F-15K fight- system will eliminate the culture er aircrafts. South Korea’s Defense of corruption, bribery and forgery Acquisition Program Administration in the matters relating to land. The aims to help the country’s forces obsolete and exploitative system of
Screenshot of Makani app respond to threats from enemy with Patwaris and Tehsildars will also be these weapons. Boeing will build eliminated.
16 / Geospatial World February 2014 Africa News
data community that would be Congo easily accessible to all the citizens. “Collaboration with the service Drones to monitor border violence providers will help promote Ghana’s The United Open Data Initiative which will help Nations will start citizens to understand and use data using surveil- provided on the portal,” said a NITA lance drones for spokesperson. the first time in Democratic Re- Kenya public of Congo to monitor the Deal sealed for mapping volatile border of minerals with Rwanda The Kenyan and Chinese govern- and movements ments have entered into a part- by military and nership that will help the latter armed groups in do mapping or airborne survey of
Courtesy: BBC Courtesy: UN drone in Congo the region. The minerals in all counties in Kenya. first two were “The Chinese government has launched from the eastern city of Goma, which was briefly occupied by equipment that would make this M23 rebels. “The drones would be an important tool to assist the mission project a success,” said Najib Balala, in fulfilling its mandate to protect civilians,” said UN spokesman Martin Cabinet Secretary for Mining. The Nesirky. By March or April, there would be a 24-hour drone surveillance underground survey would enable operation in eastern DR Congo. authorities to know about mineral deposits and their value.
Ghana service and better management of Nigeria human settlements. Street-naming exercise Kano earmarks $4.4 mn underway Ghana to promote open for statewide GIS The Head of Geographic Informa- data in the country The state government in Kano tion System (GIS) Unit of Town and The National IT Agency (NITA) has province in Nigeria will spend N700 Country Planning Department, signed an Memorandum of Under- million (approx $4.4 million) in 2014 Chapman Owusu-Sekyere, has urged standing (MoU) with the Ghana to boost its Geographic Information Ghanaians to get involved in the Library Authority (GLA) and three System (KANGIS). According to on-going street-naming exercise in local developers to help promote Commissioner for Planning and their respective areas to ensure its the Ghana Open Data Initiative Budget, Alhaji Yusuf Danbatta, all success. The exercise was not only (GODI). The MoU was signed the properties to name streets but also to develop between the Centre for Remote will be re-certi- $4.4mn a database programme that could Sensing and Geographic Informa- fied in the state. develop navigation to guide people tion Services (CERSGIS), ODEKRO, He urged land for KANGIS to their destinations. The objectives Cell Afrique and the Ghana Library owners to take of the programme were to support Authority. GODI is an initiative run advantage of the re-certification national development through easy by NITA. The MoU envisions to process to secure and protect their identification of places, delivery of create and achieve a vibrant open properties.
Geospatial World February 2014 / 17 Australia/Oceania News
GIS-based stock route characteristics of all active subduc- system for Queensland tion zones on earth. They investigated The Queensland Government has if those subduction segments that launched a new online stock route have experienced a giant earthquake management system to help local share commonalities in their physical, governments better manage the geometrical and geological properties. State’s 2.6 million hectare stock route Through these findings they identified network. “With this technology in several subduction zone regions capa- place, councils will now be able to ble of generating giant earthquakes, Screenshot of New South Wales State better manage the network in their Emergency Services mapping system including the Lesser Antilles, Mexico- area, ensure the more heavily used responders. Because of its success, it Central America, Greece, the Makran, routes are is now ready to be extended to 229 Sunda, North Sulawesi and Hikurangi. prioritised for units located throughout the State. maintenance and 2.6mn ha When major floods occur, it presents New Zealand highlight which Stock route unique challenges for incident man- sections of the network to be agement teams. GPS data revises height of network can be managed Aoraki/Mt Cook made avail- Programme to boost The official height of New Zealand’s able for grazing when there is little GIS capacity tallest peak, Aoraki/Mt Cook, is set demand for use by travelling stock. The Surveying and Spatial Sciences to fall by 30 metres, following new This system will help strengthen the Institute (SSSI) of Australia has an- measurements by University of Otago agriculture pillar of the Queensland nounced that the SIBA Board has researchers. While currently officially economy and delivers on our election formalised their support of the SSSI listed as 3,754 metres above sea level, commitment to support the indus- GIS Professional Asia Pacific (GISP-AP) Aoraki/Mt Cook try,” said Andrew Cripps, Minister certification programme. “We believe for Natural Resources and Mines. that the assessment programme will Furthermore, the GIS-based system provide SIBA members a great degree will clearly identify all travelling stock of confidence that the important func- traffic plus identify routes closed due tions of GIS analysis and cartographic to lack of pasture or water. In addi- production is being done by compe- tion, councils will also be able to issue tent professionals. ,” said a spokesper- travel permits, agistment permits and son from SIBA. water agreements online. Global map predicts GIS-based emergency location of giant quakes response system launched A team of international researchers, analysis of high accuracy GPS data The New South Wales State led by Monash University’s Associate obtained reveal that it is actually only Emergency Services (NSW SES) has Professor Wouter Schellart, have de- 3,724m tall at its highest point. The launched a new mapping system that veloped a new global map of subduc- readings confirm new aerial photog- allows volunteers on the ground to tion zones, illustrating which ones are raphy-based calculations performed instantly share real-time information predicted to be capable of generating by Otago National School of Survey- needed by incident management giant earthquakes and which ones ing researcher Dr Pascal Sirguey and teams to coordinate rescue op- are not. Researchers used earthquake Masters student Sebastian Vivero with erations. A pilot trial of the map- data going back to 1900 and data from support from GNS Science and New ping system was used to help first subduction zones to map the main Zealand Aerial Mapping Ltd.
18 / Geospatial World February 2014 Product Watch
Leica Rugby 600 series for affordability and performance Leica Geosystems has expanded its portfolio of rotating lasers with the introduction of Leica Rugby 600 Series. All five models of the Rugby 600 Series offer a professional solution with an outstanding price-to-quality-ratio, allowing quick levelling and aligning for general construction and interior applications, thus eliminating costly errors, rework and downtime. There is also a customer care package ‘PROTECT’, which offers a lifetime warranty and a three-year no-cost period.
Key features • Leica Rugby 610 is a one-button laser that works perfectly for simple horizontal alignment tasks. • Rugby 620 adds a manual slope feature for matching existing grades. • Rugby 640 is the perfect choice for quick and easy interior and exterior alignment works. The multipurpose rotating laser includes Leica Geosystems’ exclusive ‘Scan 90’ feature, beam-down and power-saving sleep mode.
CaMundo camera system for innovative mapping
CaMundo camera system by Simplex Mapping Solutions is an innovative miniature collection system that uses a unique technology concept. Weighting only 6kg, the system creates a 146 MP large size frame that aggregates 24,400 unique pixels across track. The system can also be installed on any light aircraft, helicopters and even medium-size UAVs.
Key features • Nadir and oblique views in one pass. • Up to 3cm GSD nadir ortho and up to 5cm GSD oblique views. • 24,400 unique pixels across track. (2.4km swath at 10cm GSD). • Overlap: 55% forward overlap, 75% side overlap. • 100 sqkm @10cm GSD covered in 1 hour. • Up to 1:500 maps scale and 0.5 DSM m. • Up to 50% reduction in flight hours comparing to other medium frame camera systems.
Geospatial World February 2014 / 19 Product Watch CGO for Aibot X6: effetive post-processing robust, safe, reliable CHC has released CHC Geomatics Office (CGO), a powerful software solution dedicated to post-processing Aibotix has unveiled Aibot X6, an static and kinematic GNSS raw data. It is comprehensive intelligent hexacopter platform. With and easy-to use. CGO supports GPS+GLONASS+Beidou accurate management of the camera data in various raw data formats and is compatible with resolution and the control of speed, major brands allowing a seamless integration with an exist- direction and position, the Aibot X6 ing pool of equipment. captures a cartographic area through reinterpretation of the conventional Key features photogrammetry. Hence 3D-models •Combination of GPS, GLONASS, BDS data processing. and orthophotos will be in highest •Compatible with GNSS raw data of major brands. quality. •Both Static and PPK data can be processed.
Key features • It carries an additional payload of up to 2.5kg. This is realised by the 6 rotors that are driven by maintenance-free, brushless motors. • The copter can reach a climb rate of 8 m/ sec and a speed of 60 kmph. Even if one motor would fail, the Aibot X6 has enough pow- er to fly safely. • The innovative lightweight carbon fiber casing provides protection to the propellers when the UAV is flying close to objects. • The Aibot X6 can fly programmed flight paths autonomously and independently take pre-defined aerial photos.
V-Mapper: a new mobile mapping system
3D Laser Mapping, in partnership with IGI, has developed V-Mapper, a dynamic, vehicle-mounted, 3D mapping system comprising of a precision navigation system, state-of-the-art laser scanning technology and an integrated spherical imaging system. Innovative design ensures V-Mapper is highly portable; packing down into two ruggedised cases for transport as checked-in baggage, and easy to assemble; with mounting and calibration onto a new host vehicle, using standard roof bars, in just 20 minutes.
20 / Geospatial World February 2014 Geo 7X adds remote positioning capability for greater productivity
Trimble has unveiled the new Geo 7X, the next gen- eration of its Trimble GeoExplorer data collection solution. The Geo 7X includes an integrated laser rangefinder module, extended GNSS capabilities and improved hardware performance. Together with field and office geox7_inbody1software, the new Trimble Geo 7X handheld can enhance produc- tivity in difficult physical conditions and challenging GNSS environments.
MicroSurvey CAD 2014 for geospatial data and imagery MicroSurvey has released MicroSurvey CAD 2014, an upgrade to its survey and design software that features new functionality for geospatial data, imagery, coordinate systems and geodetic tools. MicroSurvey CAD 2014 also includes the Global Mapper v15 SDK that provides support for more than 1,000 different elevation, imagery and vector formats. In addition, the software can connect to online spatial databases and online imagery providers.
Key features • Display web-based spatial data and images. • Global Mapper SDK built inside. • User settings migration wizard. • Hundreds of new coordinate system. • Geodetic positioning labelling routine.
Geospatial World February 2014 / 21 Executive Space
We want to make the geospatial common language really common A common geospatial language will enable all countries to understand each other — not only in the application aspect of it but also in terms of connecting with each other, believes Vladimir Gershenzon, Founder & Board Member, ScanEx
sensing data. We focus on real-time applications as well as historical data available from global archives. Our main client is EMERCOM, or the Min- istry of Nature and Catastrophic Phe- nomena, for whom we developed ap- plications that use remote sensing data in real time. We also have a number of commercial customers like oil compa- nies and others involved in ice moni- toring, pollution detection, transporta- tion etc. Our operations are mainly in the CIS countries but we also provide services around the world.
Economic and business activities have significantly increased in Russia. In such a scenario, which are your target areas? Forestry, agriculture, emergency ser- vices and regional and university-lev- el activities are our favourite areas of operation. Also, because they are more close to their field of activity, they are responsible for growing a new gen- eration of specialists. Interestingly, ScanEx is offering technical expertise ow has ScanEx evolved agreement with leading players in the to some of these universities, not just over the years and what remote sensing market – whether Euro- in Russia but also in Spain and some kind of activities is it pean, American or other countries. We other countries. involved in? are engaged in different kinds of activi- HScanEx is a private company ties in the field of data collection. ScanEx is known to have played a with over 20 years of operations We deal with a vast range of remote major role in developing the cadas- in designing and manufacturing sensing imagery such as optical radar, tre in Russia. Tell us a little more of ground receiving stations and high resolution or medium resolution; about that project? software packages for remote sensing though the concentration is mainly on The cadastre project aimed to cover data processing, archiving and licence the operational application of remote the entire country in high resolution —
22 / Geospatial World February 2014 0.5m resolution, data that is not older and we have to follow all these rules than three years. There was an open and copyright policies. tender, which we bid for and won. We are trying The project, which was completed How is the awareness in the to make the in a year, was done in three ways — government circles in Russia multi-scale mapping for Web, cadastral towards the use of remote sensing technology work data checking and remote sensing data imagery for various applications? checking. The idea was to make availa- It is increasing with time. We are also faster, easily ble all three kinds of data to the public. working towards promoting and edu- available and ScanEx has completed all 17 million cating the public. There is a Russian sq km (data purchased, processed and language portal called Yandex which is cheaper. This delivered), but around 4 million sq km even more popular than Google here. “ turned out to be covered with clouds And now Yandex is also focussing out- expands our and have to be replaced within three side Russia, in countries like Japan and customer base years of the guarantee period. Ukraine. Yandex has a lot of space im- It [a cadastral project] is very chal- ages, with maps and without maps. It is lenging for a huge, diverse country our close partner at the B2C level. business in different technologies. One like Russia. It is also important that we We also have our own geo-portal, of them, called Sputniks, is connected create a common geospatial language Kosmosnimki, which is more of a with designing and manufacturing mi- between the Far East and the European remote sensing geoportal based on a crosatellites. I hope this will be an ad- territories. The European part is much ScanEx technology called geomixer. dition to the remote sensing technology more densely populated compared to, It can give one a lot of examples of that already exists. There is going to be say, Siberia, which have only pipelines products that have been done through demand from universities and govern- on the north. About two-thirds of the the utilisation of remote sensing tech- ments bodies. Russian territory is sparsely populated. nology. There are different types of The implementation will, of course, Prior to the satellite era, it was im- access to data on Kosmosnimki: some be more effective under the specific possible to collect quality information information is freely available for regulations because it is understanda- from all parts of the country and our everyone, while some parts of it are ble for the government to be concerned cadastral surveys were not so conven- available for high-end customers and about terrorist activities in such sensi- ient and uniform. Now, new technolo- there are some parts giving subscrip- tive spheres. But that doesn’t mean the gies like satellite imageries with pre- tion-based information. growth and development of technolo- cise resolution of just 0.5m permit us We are trying to make the technol- gy needs to be restricted. ScanEx may to create the initial base. More precise ogy work faster, easily available and not have any plans to cover each and information with navigators and other cheaper. This permits us to expand our every part of the world with its network devices can improve the quality of that customer base. Many of our clients ask stations or have partners in every city, data. However, there have been several for more professional data. So we are but we have an advantage of flexibility problems especially with mapping and fully open, having all kinds of access and accessibility. geospatial activities, despite the availa- with respect to all kinds of data rules We want to make the geospatial bility of government satellite data. and following them strictly. common language really common for different countries to understand each What is the policy environment ScanEx has been a major player in other not only in the application aspect while dealing with satellite imagery? this domain and been quite active of it but also in terms of connecting with Since we procure data from all over the in Russia, CIS states and parts each other. world, we have to obtain correspond- of Europe. What are your future I hope that geospatial leaders, ing licences. For instance, all meteor- business plans? students and professors have the same ological information is open in the US Our business plan is to be as open as pos- vision of future. We are ready to be and China. But higher the resolution, sible in a wide variety of implementation in a family which has the expertise to more expensive is the data. Each player as well as getting involved in many organise more global projects for sus- has its own policy in connection with government projects. We have created tainability, understanding each other and their respective governmental rules, several companies to concentrate our to prevent corruption.
Geospatial World February 2014 / 23 DATA ACCESS APPLICATIONS
SERVICES PPP
SDI: Quo Vadis? Illustration Deb Thus far, SDIs have served the needs of few geospatial experts. But going forward, spatial data infrastructures need to evolve as spatial information infrastructures, providing information products and services to large cross-section of non-expert users from all major economic sectors. By Prof Arup Dasgupta
“At the moment, most SDIs are about managing spatial in- design cannot satisfy all users. The most contentious ques- formation and thus do not go beyond the established users. tion is ‘who pays?’ At the moment, it is the governments who To make a leap, SDIs have to begin to manage information are picking up the tab but with the expansion of services, spatially, become an instrument of enablement of many ap- all players can turn contributors... In short we have come plications like healthcare, homeland security and business a long way in realising the importance of SDIs and the op- processes. Success stories clearly show that the need is portunities and pitfalls that await us and we have a longer to start small but move quickly to implement services and way to go.” these have to match the requirements. A single monolithic — Editorial, Geospatial World, November 2010.
24 / Geospatial World February 2014 patial Data Infrastructure (SDI) seems to be a con- of Denmark uses OGC Web Map Server Interface Standard cept, whose realisation is just around the corner — a to display maps from various databases. The Dutch National corner that seems to be just a step away but at every Mapping Agency Kadaster uses a GML-based application step the corner seems to move ahead another step. schema for data sharing. The Dutch Kadaster Topographical SMy November 2010 editorial came after I had attended the Service (http://www.tdn.nl) has demonstrated interoperabil- 12th GSDI Conference in October 2010. Now in 2014, more ity involving their TOP 10 GML schemas (also known as than three years down the line, it is interesting to see how TOP10NL) and a number of commercial products. close we are to that corner. In Europe, SANY (Sensor Systems Anywhere) — a Pro- gramme 6 (FP6) integrated project — is a leading implemen- A status check tation of the OGC Sensor Web standards. Kongsberg Sat- SDI has two components, technical and administrative. Doug ellite Services (KSAT) runs a satellite-based, near-real-time Nebert of the FGDC, USA had formulated a concept of the (30-min maximum delay), oil-spill detection service through technical component in the late 1990s as shown in Figure the EMSA (European Maritime Security Agency) CleanSe- 1. The administrative components comprise of distribution aNet service, whose content is published in The OGC’s Ge- mechanisms, access policy and regulation, user interface, ography Markup Language (GML) 3.1.1 encoding standard. training and human and financial resources. An examination The German North Rhine Westphalia Sig3D organisation of where the world stands on these components and their developed CityGML, an emerging and globally important integration to serve the geospatial community should give a OGC standard for sharing urban models and integrating de- view of the progress. Each community has its own require- sign drawings with spatial data. ment to be met by the SDI. The generators would like to see an efficient management system for their data. The value ad- Framework dition group would like to have a wide choice of data suites Each country uses its own framework for the data. This re- customised to their needs and available at an attractive price. sults in a bewildering set of spheroidal models and projec- They would also look forward to a market for their products. tions. However, with the availability of GPS, most countries The third group requires reliable and cheap information at have begun to use the WGS84 model of the earth but the the time and place where it is most needed. All would have choice of projection systems remains open. There are over to work within a technical and legal framework, which has 400 projection systems and their use is dictated by the scale to be put in place by the government. and purpose of mapping. For instance, South Africa is fully covered by the highly Standards accurate National Control Survey System (NCSS) consisting Today the OGC/ISO data encryption standards are widely of a network of Trigonometrical stations and Town Survey used. Prominent among these are GML 3.3 corresponding Marks. From January 1999, the NCSS has been based on the to ISO 19136:2007 for encoding geospatial data; the others World Geographic System 1984 ellipsoid with the position relate to specific data types like urban (City GML) and dig- of the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Telescope as the ital geospatial time varying data (NetCDF), etc. There are several Web Services standards like WMS, WCS, WFS and Technical Elements of SDI (Figure 1) WCPS to name a few. These open standards have indeed gone a long way in realising interoperable systems and re- Application Specific Modules moving the tyranny of vendor lock-in. It is also interesting to note that there is an intermingling of standards. OGC bor- Communication Networks rows from W3C and OASYS and has a symbiotic relation- ship with ISO. As technology progresses so do the stand- Clearinghouse ards. For example, a new set of Web service standards called the RestAPI are in their first version. Over and above these Metadata standards, there are national standards which also look at the content standardisation for different themes. Framework Geodata In 2007, a Canadian Interoperability Pilot was organised to test and demonstrate the feasibility of using open stand- Standards ards based technology to improve the management and dis- Partnership semination of CGDI data. The National Survey & Cadastre Nebert et al
Geospatial World February 2014 / 25 Cover Story/Governance & Information Infrastructure
Australia As one of the first movers in this field, Australia has set up an SDI consisting of a wide variety of OGC standards-based en- terprise implementations, including Western Australia’s Land- gate-developed Shared Land Information Platform (SLIP), which forms the foundation of an information connection service that serves 19 government agencies. The Foundation Spatial Data Framework provides a common reference for the assembly and maintenance of Australian and New Zealand foundation level spatial data to serve a wide variety of users. origin of the system. A second network of active GPS base makes maps available at 1:100,000 and 1:50,000 for the whole stations is gradually supplementing the older network. country. Large scale maps are available at 1:10,000 scale for The main mandate for mapping in India lies with Survey of 400 towns. It carries out resurvey and produces digital maps India and they have specified the ground control points for all once in three years. The geoportal hosts more than 500,000 other agencies to follow, so that all the different thematic maps open-for-all maps. Rostreestr is currently undertaking the — be it from Forest Survey of India or Revenue Department country-wide cadastral mapping project, bringing together all or any other agency — can be integrated seamlessly. Primary the 5000 different databases containing spatial data and se- control points are 300-400 km apart and all mapping has to be mantic data, developing new systems for the entire Russian done with reference to these control points only. Now these are Federation, and centralising business processes. being densified to 30-40 km apart, using DGPS. Survey of India produces its Open Map Series on WGS84 Through the Digital National Framework (DNF), now with Transverse UTM projection for maps at 1:250,000, in GML, the Ordnance Survey, Great Britain’s national 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 scales. Its Defence Map Series uses mapping agency, has transformed the way it operates in WGS84 and LCC projection. Currently, Survey of India is order to realise its new vision. The restructured DNF data working on producing maps at 1:10,000 scale for the whole greatly enhances the versatility and usability of large scale country. It is also spearheading mission mode projects like topographic data, turning it from merely a “representation the Integrated Coastal Zone Mapping. The National Remote of a line map” into a GIS-friendly model of the real world. Sensing Centre (NRSC) of the Department of Space makes Using GML for data supply makes it accessible to more the remote sensing data from Indian and foreign satellites. software systems, and hence to more users, than would be NASG is the central authority responsible for the overall possible using any other format. supervision and management of surveying, mapping and geoinformation in China. NASG has completed 1:4,000,000 Geodata topographic database; 1:1,000,000 topographic database and Today SDIs are using a variety of data sources from satellite DEM database; 1:250,000 topographic database, DEM da- imagery to GPS and Total Stations. In Russia, Federal Service tabase and geographic name database; 1:10,000 DEM data- for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography, Rostreestr, base and ortho-image database of seven major river valleys; 1:50,000 digital raster graphic database, DEM database, geographic name database, land cover database and TM satellite image database. Each province is making efforts to Each country uses its own establish 1:10,000 topographic database, DEM database, or- data framework, which tho-image database, digital raster graphic database and etc. In South Africa, the National Geospatial Information results in a bewildering (NGI) unit of the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR), is working at 1:50,000 scale or set of spheroidal models that level of detail, which is equivalent to 1:50,000 scale and projections which includes all the topographical information. South Africa, for many years has been producing orthophoto
26 / Geospatial World February 2014 maps at 1:10,000 scale. As users are now grated geospatial data system, which are using orthoimagery, all the aerial photos further integrated into the National Spa- United States are rectified to orthophoto image. Every tial Data Infrastructure System run by The Federal Geographic Data third year the orthophoto image will be re- the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Committee (FGDC) of the USA freshed through fresh aerial surveys. Transport. Massive geospatial data such as is an interagency committee digital topographic maps are provided to that promotes the coordinated Metadata citizens and private sector through the Na- development, use, sharing, and Generally, metadata standards which are tional Spatial Information Clearinghouse. dissemination of geospatial data based on a very comprehensive model for Others, including 3D geospatial data, are on a national basis. This nation- generic IT data called the Dublin Core are also shared through Geospatial Informa- wide data publishing effort is extremely complicated. India has developed tion Open Platform. known as the National Spatial a more functional metadata standard which Data Infrastructure (NSDI), a is based on the OGC Catalogue Service for Communications physical, organisational, and the Web and promotes it as NSDI Metadata Max Craglia, Joint Research Centre of the virtual network designed to en- Lite. However, how many data suppliers are European Commission aptly says, “SDIs able the development and shar- using this standard is not clear. Metadata en- are children of the Internet, without which ing of this nation’s digital geo- ables data discovery which in turn reduces they would not exist”. The evolution of the graphic information resources. data duplication. There is a need to promote high speed Internet, Cloud architecture and FGDC activities are administered the value of metadata to show the users how massive storage has provided an excellent through the FGDC Secretariat, to actually benefit from the metadata; First, network for setting up SDIs. However, the hosted by the US Geological Sur- what is available and second, to understand service is patchy. For example, NGI has a vey. A growing number of states the suitability of that information. geo-portal, but very low bandwidths in South in the country — Arkansas, South Africa is developing a new sys- Africa make it impractical to allow very large Massachusetts, North Carolina, tem which addresses several of these issues, files to be accessed through the Internet. On Pennsylvania among others — which will only work if the data collectors the other hand, it is now fairly easy to access are building Web-centric SDIs are posting their metadata into the system. high-resolution geospatial data and maps that rely on OGC standards. So, what NGI is trying to do is to make the together with other contents on the Internet system harvest the metadata from all the and websites in Korea have increased their FDGC’s geoportal provides data collectors into the system, to reduce investments in high-quality map services, maps from data sources that are the burden on the data collectors to post the both for desktop and portable devices. available on a national scale of metadata into the system. coverage, like this map of USA’s wetlands at a scale of 1:250,000 Applications and greater. Clearing house Brazil’s INCRA is beginning to forge The concept of clearing houses is fuzzy. Is it just a portal to discover and bind to data stores or does it also include commercial and legal information as well? Spain’s IDEE´s ar- chitecture is a good example. It is based on the principle of decentralisation and is imple- mented as a network of geoportals and nodes. For example, IDEC, the Geoportal of the Catalonia SDI, a project of the government of the autonomous region of Catalonia (Spain), offers several services, including the mul- tilingual Catalogue Server, with more than 18,000 records of metadata available (53,000 in both Spanish and English), describing data available from over 80 providers. In the Republic of Korea, each local government body has established inte-
Geospatial World February 2014 / 27 Cover Story/Governance & Information Infrastructure
With several national SDIs Partnerships Conceptually, SDIs thrive on partnerships. But most often than still grappling with data not, we see partnerships among government agencies in realis- availability, accessibility and ing the vision of NSDI. The Federal Geographic Data Commit- tee (FGDC), geodata.gov (also known as Geospatial One-Stop sharing aspects, application or GOS), and The National Map are three national geospatial initiatives that share the goal of building the US NSDI. FGDC development seems a focuses on policy, standards and advocacy; GOS on discov- distant dream. ery and access; while The National Map focuses on integrat- ed, certified base mapping content. The National Geospatial Programs Office (NGPO) of the US Geological Survey is the organisational host for these complementary activities. partnerships with the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and The German province North Rhine Westphalia estab- Supply, which has developed a management platform that lished its spatial data infrastructure, GDI NRW, as a joint in- works with agricultural elements such as bovine traceability itiative of state agencies, municipalities, private companies and animal quality conditions, and this is being connected and scientific institutes. About 140 participating institutions with land information. Further, it will be possible to join the are involved, and the benefits of SDI have been demonstrat- elements of agricultural management platform with the issue ed in several test-beds and joint projects involving many of land ownership information. Also, partnership with the partners. In Spain, working Group for IDEE, is composed of Ministry of Environment will help in the development of the 239 organisations, more than 412 individual members, was Rural Environmental Registry. set up taking on board all the relevant public bodies, private To promote application development, China constitut- companies and academia. INSPIRE, the pan-EU initiative, is ed National Geospatial Information Coordinating Coun- an exemplary example of collaborative mechanism achieved cil (NGICC) with 21 ministries as members. This Council by 28 different countries in a truly democratic fashion. coordinates the NSDI development and utilisation through However, in the backdrop of constrained government policy guidance and multi-level exchanges, cooperation and funding, it is prudent that NSDIs partner with private sec- training. XU Deming, Director General, National Bureau of tor. INSPIRE launched smeSpire -- a project to rope in Surveying and Mapping (NBSM), China avers that China at- SMEs to enable countries to fulfil the Directive, creating taches great importance to sustainable development and the new market opportunities with increased potential for in- rational utilisation of natural resources, and has made sus- novation and new jobs. tainable development a national strategy. A new law for NSDI in Russia will soon make a PPP net- The Dutch Geo-Information and ICT Department of the work necessary. Every network needs to be registered with the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management is responsible for traffic via roads, waterways and railways, and by air, and they are also responsible for clean water in the rivers, lakes and the sea, and the management of water tables. However, with several national level SDIs still grappling with data availability, accessibility and sharing aspects, appli- cation development seems a distant dream. India is a classic case. A decade into the formalisation of NSDI, India is still grappling with regulatory aspects of data accessibility.
Canada The Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure Interoperability (CGDI) has been developed by the federal government in partnership with the provinces, territories and the private The National Air Photo Library of Natural sector. The CGDI is comprised of the technology, standards, access systems and Resources Canada archives over six million protocols necessary to harmonise all of Canada’s geospatial databases, and aerial photographs covering all of Canada, make them available on the Internet. some of which date back to the 1920s
28 / Geospatial World February 2014 lying technology, and to make it accessible to and effectively Brazil used by a broad range of users. According to the UN-GGIM, The National Institute of Agrarian Colonization and the role of the government, as the regulator and programme Reform (Instituto Nacional implementer, is rapidly shifting from being a primary pro- de Colonização e Reforma vider of authoritative geospatial information to coordinating Agrária or INCRA) in Brazil and managing geospatial data and facilitating partnerships is strictly following the among the producers and consumers of geospatial informa- guidelines of the National tion. As a result, many countries are developing national Spatial Data Infrastructure policies and practices that formalise the ways in which their (INDE) developed by the geospatial data can be shared, used, and disseminated. They federal government to speed are also considering legislation and regulatory framework up the integration effort of for protecting national security, confidentiality and citizen base information. privacy rights, if they have not already done so. The INDE portal allows the The National GIS Steering Committee (NGISSC) of user to select the layers they Bahrain Spatial Data Infrastructure has successfully accom- want to display data from a list of WMS services already built plished the ‘Data Exchange Policy’ for use by data users and into the viewer providers and acts as a binding deed for data exchange for parties involved and their agreement regarding exchange government, so that the government can use it and build virtual procedures and protection of data and data sources. network. It is modelled on the lines of the telecom network, However, the pace of formulating and implementing pol- which also uses PPP model. The Federal Service will operate icies governing spatial data access and use is quite sluggish the NSDI geoportal for all government data while delivery part in many countries owing partly to the delays inherent in par- will be with industry. Territorial information is shared with local ticipatory approach of SDIs and partly due to the reluctance governments free of charge and the digital data is fed to other to share data among key stakeholders. “There has been pro- government and private sector organisations like banks and in- gress, but it’s been very slow because people are still try- surance agencies. For satellite mapping, Scanex was awarded a ing to understand and come to terms with what SDI really project for multi-scale mapping for Web, cadastral data check- means,” says Derek Clarke, Director, NGI, South Africa. ing and remote sensing data checking. In Brazil, the Ministry of Agrarian Development is responsible for rural land planning, and the Ministry of Cities for urban land planning. The goal is to integrate these two efforts. By combining the rural and urban outlook, INCRA hopes to offer an integrated founda- tion to municipalities and states that can then be a one- stop address for these different dimensions. The Agustin Codazzi Geographic Institute (IGAC) is the official producer of national information regard- ing cartography, geography, agrology, and cadastre, and IGAC works toward building an NSDI to advance eco- Screenshot of Romanian INIS GeoPortal — First Published nomic and social development. Columbia’s National Geospa- Resources. The GeoPortal is designed to facilitate the discovery tial Directory offers services to educational, environmental, and exchange geospatial data resources to a broader community risk management and land management, geology and hydro- of users carbons sectors. Romania The Romanian national mapping agency — Agentia Access policy and regulation Nationala de Cadastru si Publicitate Imobiliara (ANCPI) Creating a successful National Spatial Data Infrastructure is or the National Agency for Cadastre and Real-Estate a highly challenging task, and the most important element Publicity — is actively developing an NSDI, and recently lies, not at the technical level, but in establishing effective worked with the Dutch Cadastre to design a service coordination and infrastructure management in order to real- oriented NSDI architecture based on OGC standards. ise the full potential of geospatial information and the under-
Geospatial World February 2014 / 29 Cover Story/Governance & Information Infrastructure
UK The UK is comprised of the devolved administrations of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and they all have their own SDIs. Scotland has One Geography, One Scotland and they are working on a cookbook that uses OGC standards. There is also One Wales and GeoHub Northern Ireland, which are using OGC standards.
Britain’s national mapping organisation Ordnance Survey offers accurate and up-to-date geographic information and innovative solutions like this, whereby users can create their own personalised map
lip service was paid to serving the public. This service it was “Lot of the SDI work is driven by people who are not at a assumed, though not enunciated, would be delivered by the very senior level and this is hampering progress. Particularly government agencies to the public, tacitly assuming that the at the senior policy level, when it comes to prioritising work public was a passive entity. Today, the scene has changed; programmes and budgetary provisions, SDI is not used.” the Cloud has replaced discrete servers, the Internet is now powerful enough to deliver geospatial data and services and, The way forward most importantly, the emergence of the public as an active The US NSDI initiative, which began with a Presidential consumer and supplier of geospatial data. order in 1994, has released a document on NSDI Strategic SDIs thus far have largely been top down activities based Plan 2014-16 which concludes that “the geospatial technol- on existing data of national governments. However, the most ogy field is at a remarkable point in its evolution, presenting valuable data is at urban scales, and the most important thing an opportunity to rethink the deployment and use of these re- is to enable multi-directional exchange of data and collabo- sources across the Federal sector, and to enhance our ability ration across the spectrum of urban development activities to solve problems using geographic information while ulti- including design, construction, management and operations. mately saving time and money. This plan provides a new set SDI should be seen more like Enterprise Application Integra- of goals, objectives, and actions to advance Federal geospa- tion (EAI), except that it is pan-enterprise. Another emerging tial programmes in light of the changing state of geospatial view is that there is a need to bring together the top-down offi- technology and capabilities”. cial information and bottom-up citizen-provided information. What does this mean? Back in 1994 when SDI emerged To enable this, the current systems/institutional processes as a concept, the technologies available were, by present need to be designed for a dynamic information environment. times, rather limited. The NSDI proponents thus talked of Though SDIs have woken up to the role private sector servers and desktops, massive networks and so forth. Ben- can play in managing and developing applications, there eficiaries were other government departments though some is still a long way to go in engaging with the industry for mutual benefit. From acting as back office to government departments, to providing services to developing SDIs on SDIs must bring top-down build-own-operate-transfer model, the private sector, espe- cially SMEs, can be engaged in several innovative ways to official information and address the bottom of the pyramid. At present, SDIs serve the needs of few geospatial experts. Going forward, spatial bottom-up citizen-provided data infrastructures need to evolve into spatial information information together. To infrastructures, providing information products and servic- es to large cross section of non-expert users from all major enable this, current systems/ economic sectors. institutional processes need Prof Arup Dasgupta, Managing Editor, to be designed for a dynamic [email protected] Co-authored by Bhanu Rekha, Executive Editor, information environment [email protected]
30 / Geospatial World February 2014 Tourism services on Bhuvan
RISAT-1 Medium Resolution with VV polarisation
Delhi
National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad www.nrsc.gov.in http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in [email protected] Governance & Information Infrastructure/INSPIRE INSPIRE TowardsTowards aa ParticipatoryParticipatory DigitalDigital EarthEarth
Courtesy: http://im9.eu/
An infrastructure built on those of 28 different countries in 24 languages by a truly democratic process, INSPIRE is a role model not only in relation to the developments of SDI but more generally to the formulation of public policy at the European level. Find out how INSPIRE is facilitating consensus-based policy and is developing and maintaining a network of stakeholders. By Max Craglia
or people who are not so familiar with the concept of need to share knowledge and data across multiple organisations an SDI, it is easier to think of it as an extension of a in both public and private sectors, and SDIs support this effort. desk-top GIS. Whilst in a ‘normal’ GIS, most of the data we use for analysis is our own, or collected by INSPIRE: Why and how? the agency we work for, an SDI is an Internet-based INSPIRE is a legal act (Directive 2007/2/EC) of the Council Fplatform to make it easier for us to search and find data that and the European Parliament setting up an Infrastructure for may be relevant for our work and that may be collected, Spatial Information in Europe based on infrastructures for spa- stored or published by other organisations, and often other tial information established and operated by the 28 sovereign countries. For this reason, SDIs are often termed as children Member States of the European Union. All the spatial data of the Internet, without which they would not exist. that is part of INSPIRE comes via the organisations responsi- SDIs are the response to an increased recognition that the en- ble in the Member States and this EU-wide SDI is developed vironmental and social phenomena we are called to understand in a decentralised way, building on the SDIs and related activ- and govern are very complex, and that no single organisation ities established and maintained by the Member States. has the know-how and the data to do the job alone. Hence, we The prime purpose of INSPIRE is to support environ-
32 / Geospatial World February 2014 mental policy, and overcome barriers affecting the avail- data and services, network services, data and service-sharing ability and accessibility of relevant data. These barriers policies, and monitoring and reporting indicators to evaluate include: inconsistencies in spatial data collection; lack or the extent of the Directive’s implementation and to assess its incomplete documentation of available spatial data; lack of impact. Each of these regulations needs the approval of the compatibility among spatial datasets that cannot, therefore, Member States and of the European Parliament. By Decem- be combined with others; incompatible SDI initiatives in the ber 2013, almost all the regulations were approved. The only Member States that often function only in isolation; cultural, missing one, expected in spring 2014, refers to the technical institutional, financial and legal barriers preventing or delay- specification for the harmonisation of spatial data services. ing the sharing of existing spatial data. INSPIRE has some characteristics that make it particu- The key elements of the INSPIRE Directive to overcome larly challenging. The most obvious is that it is an infrastruc- these barriers include: ture built on those of 28 different countries in 24 languages. • Metadata to describe existing information resources so The requirements for multi—lingual services and interoper- that they can be more easily found and accessed; ability among very different information systems and profes- • Harmonisation of key spatial data themes needed to sional and cultural practices are, therefore, very demanding. support environmental policies in the Union; For example, existing standards have to be tested in real • Agreements on network services and technologies to allow distributed and multi—lingual settings. In the best scenario all discovery, view, download of information resources, and works well, but for a European-wide implementation, there is access to related services; a need to translate the standards and related guidelines into the • Policy agreements on sharing and access, including relevant languages (ISO, OGC and other standards are typi- licensing and charging; cally in English only). In other instances, testing has demon- • Coordination and monitoring mechanisms. strated that the standards are not mature enough, or leave too INSPIRE addresses 34 key spatial data themes organised much room for different interpretations, and thus require fur- in three groups (or Annexes to the Directive) reflecting dif- ther definition or individual bridges to make different system ferent levels of harmonisation expected, and a staged phas- interoperate. This can be seen with tests on distributed queries ing (see Table 1 on Page 34). in catalogues all using the same specifications (OGC CS-W 2.0) that identified a number of shortcomings, that required Legal framework the development of an adaptor for each catalogue, which in a The legal framework of INSPIRE has two main levels. At the Europe-wide system with thousands of catalogues, would ob- first, there is the INSPIRE Directive itself, which sets the ob- viously not scale. These shortcomings have been put forward jectives to be achieved and asks the Member States to pass to the OGC for consideration. In harder cases still, there are no their own national legislation establishing their SDIs. This standards available, and therefore, they have to be created. This mechanism of European as well as a national legislation allows applies, for example, to ‘invoke’ services that are needed for each country to define its own way to achieve the objective service chaining and to the specifications required for the inter- agreed taking into account its own institutional characteristics operability of spatial datasets and services, which is a central and history of development. As an example, Germany does feature of INSPIRE. not have a single SDI but a coordinated framework among 17 To understand the context, it is worth reminding that each SDIs, one for each of its states (Länder), and one at the fed- country in Europe has its own heritage and traditions, which eral level (which also means that 17 different legal acts had also include different ways and methods for collecting envi- to be passed to implement INSPIRE). The INSPIRE Directive ronmental and geographic data, different methods on how to also requires the establishment of an EU geoportal operated analyse them, and also visualise them, including different co- by the European Commission to which the infrastructures of ordinate reference systems (sometimes more than one in each the Member States have to connect (http://inspire-geoportal. ec.europa.eu/). The challenge of having 28 different ‘flavours’ of INSPIRE is that making the system work is undoubtedly more difficult. The purpose of INSPIRE is For this reason, the Directive envisages a second level of leg- to support environmental islation, more stringent because it has to be implemented as is and does not require follow-up national legislation. There- policy and ensure easy fore, INSPIRE envisages technical implementation of rules in the form of regulations for metadata, harmonisation of spatial accessibility of relevant data
Geospatial World February 2014 / 33 Governance & Information Infrastructure/INSPIRE
Key data themes addressed country), projections, and vertical reference proposal was subject to an extended impact by INSPIRE Table 1 systems. These different traditions mean that assessment to identify potential costs and Annex I it is not enough for an SDI in Europe to help benefits, before opening for public consulta- Coordinate reference systems users find and access data, it is also neces- tion. The revised proposal was then debated sary to understand the meaning of what we by the Council and European Parliament over Geographical grid systems are accessing to make appropriate use of it. a three-year period before final adoption in Geographical names This means, in turn, we need to develop not 2007. This process in itself is a good example only translation tools to help overcome the in democracy, but the more interesting aspect Administrative units “natural” language barriers, but also agreed is the way in which interested stakeholders are Addresses reference frameworks, classification systems continuing to participate in all the ongoing ac- Cadastral parcels and ontologies, data models, and schemas tivities required to develop the INSPIRE Im- Transport networks for each of the data themes shown in Table 1, plementing Rules (i.e. the follow-up legal acts against which the national data can be trans- and detailed technical guidance documents). Hydrography formed or mapped. This is necessary because To organise this process, two mechanisms Protected sites it is not possible to ask the Member States and have been put in place: the first is to engage their national and local organisations to re-en- the organisations at the European national and gineer all their databases. Thus, the approach sub-national level that already have a formal Annex II adopted is to develop agreed European mod- legal mandate for the coordination, produc- Elevation els and systems of transformation (on-the-fly tion or use of geographic and environmental Land cover or batch) so that the level of interoperability information (the so called Legally Mandated necessary for key European applications can Organisations or LMOs). The second mech- Ortho-imagery be achieved. The approach sounds simple anism aims to facilitate the self-organisation Geology but putting it into practice is very complex, of stakeholders, including spatial data pro- as it required already three years of work to viders and users from both the public and develop an agreed methodology (the Generic private sectors, in spatial data interest com- Annex III Conceptual Model) and tools, mobilise hun- munities (SDICs) by region, societal sector, Statistical units dreds of experts in different domains, and de- and thematic issue. These SDICs identify and Buildings liver and test the specifications for all the data describe user requirements, provide expertise themes shown in Table 1. to INSPIRE Drafting Teams, participate in Soil the review process of the draft implementing Human health & safety Organisational model rules, develop, operate and evaluate the im- Utility & governmental services The organisational model put in place to plementation pilots, and develop initiatives develop INSPIRE is one of its interesting for guidance, awareness raising, and training Environmental monitoring features, drawing significant attention from in relation to the INSPIRE implementation. Production & industrial facilities outside Europe. It is a huge exercise in public There was an open call in March 11, 2005 Agricultural & aquaculture participation, the like of which is most unusu- for the registration of interest by SDICs and al in policy making, at least in Europe. From LMOs, who were also asked to put forward Area management/restriction/ the outset, it was recognised that for INSPIRE expert and reference material to support the regulation zones & reporting to overcome barriers to data access and be preparation of the Implementing Rules. There Natural risk zones successful, it was necessary for the legisla- was a second call in 2009 to support the de- Atmospheric conditions tors, implementers, and practitioners in the velopment of Annex II and III specifications, Meteorological geographical Member States to come together and agree on and an Internet Forum has also been set up to features a shared understanding of the problem, and of help Member States share experiences and possible solutions. Therefore, an expert group tools. As a result, hundreds of organisations Oceanographic geographical with official representatives of all the Member and experts throughout Europe have partic- features States was established at the beginning of the ipated in the development and testing of the Sea regions process in 2001, together with working groups technical specifications of INSPIRE which Bio-geographical regions of experts in the fields of environmental pol- makes the specifications more robust from a icy and geographic information to formulate technical point of view and more acceptable Habitats and biotopes options and forge consensus. The INSPIRE from an organisational/political point of view. Species distribution Energy Resources Mineral resources INSPIRE geoportal highlighting the riverside areas in west UK. The INSPIRE geoportal provides access to geographic information provided by Europe’s governments, commercial and non-commercial organisations. The drafting teams have a challenging task in collecting Member States to establish and maintain their SDIs, nominate and summarising reference material, seeking common de- an organisation as a contact point with the Commission, and nominators and reference models, and developing recom- set up appropriate coordinating mechanisms. In many coun- mendations which satisfy user requirements without imposing tries, SDIs already exist at national or sub-national levels. So an undue burden on those organisations that have day-to-day the effort is more focused on agreeing division of responsibility responsibility for data collection and management across Eu- than in setting up new structures. In other countries, INSPIRE rope. Their recommendations are then submitted for review offers an opportunity for organisations that have been leading to all the registered SDICs and LMOs and to the representa- SDI developments for years to get their just recognition, and tives of the Member States. After revision and checking, the acquire new status and legitimacy. In others still, the opportu- draft implementing rule goes thorough the final round of the nities for some organisations are perceived as threats by others. democratic process before becoming a new legal act. This in- INSPIRE, like anything changing the status quo, has therefore volves qualified majority voting by the representatives of the become the spark for settling scores among stakeholders. Member States and the scrutiny of the European Parliament. The current difficult financial climate makes it more chal- The complexity of this participatory approach is certainly lenging to invest in new infrastructures and ways of working. innovative, not only in relation to the developments of SDIs Hence, one of the challenges in most countries is to leverage but also more generally to the formulation of public policy resources available from different sources (European, nation- at the European level. The outcome produces both consen- al, international), and/or ensure strong synergy between the sus-based policy and the development, and maintenance of a investment required by INSPIRE and those committed in re- network of stakeholders that make it possible to implement lated projects, for example in the framework of e-government. more effectively this distributed European SDI. Underpinning this organisational challenge, there are the key issue of awareness, education and training. Although the The challenges Joint Research Commission of the European Commission Although a great deal of work has taken place with the support has involved thousands of people in the development of of many stakeholders, there are several organisational and tech- INSPIRE, and most national-level organisations in the Mem- nical challenges (and opportunities) that need to be addressed. ber States are aware of this initiative, few people belonging Organisational: The most crucial challenge was to maintain to these organisations are actively participating, and the lev- the momentum and the high level of commitment of all the el of awareness of INSPIRE and its future impacts may be stakeholders and the experts contributing to the development lost to other parts of the same organisation. Moreover, many of the Implementing Rules. This requires a notable amount public sector administrations at the sub-national level still of resources (time, money, expertise, commitment) to ensure have limited or no knowledge of INSPIRE. Last but not the that stakeholders feel ownership of the process, which then least, the complexity of the technical documentation being becomes a prerequisite for more effective implementation. produced at the present time is posing to be a limiting factor Another facet is the organisational challenges in the Mem- as very few people can understand or use, requiring educa- ber States to implement INSPIRE. INSPIRE Directive asks tion and training. However, there is not enough staff, nor
Geospatial World February 2014 / 35 Governance & Information Infrastructure/INSPIRE training material designed and translated across Europe so jor technological developments that have made it possible to that everybody implements exactly the same specs. bring the experience of digital earth to hundreds of millions Technical: The main challenge here is to develop and main- of people. It also reviewed many public sector-led initiatives tain an infrastructure that works, and that delivers added val- aimed at organising geographic information (e.g. INSPIRE, ue. As indicated earlier, the suite of international standards GEOSS), and private sector developments aimed at organis- and specifications available is sometimes not mature enough ing the world information geographically (e.g. Google Earth to deliver, or subject to different interpretations, changes, and and Virtual Earth), which have made it possible for citizens to inconsistencies. INSPIRE took the view that it was not fea- contribute and share geographic information easily and inter- sible for it to include all the detailed specifications down to act with each other in what is labelled as Web 2.0. rules for encoding into a legal act, as any change in standards, On this basis, the expert meeting articulated a revised technologies, or good practice would then require lengthy pro- vision of digital earth that recognises the need to integrate cedures to amend the legislation. As a result, the INSPIRE Im- scientific, public and private sector data to help understand plementing Rules are short and only say what functionalities the complex interactions between natural, man-made, and are required, leaving the detailed implementation to non-bind- social environments, over time and across space. To support ing Guidelines documents. This of course has its drawbacks this vision, the meeting identified key research topics to fo- as one cannot guarantee that everyone will use the Guidelines cus on, including improved methods for the spatial-temporal and that interoperability will be achieved immediately. modelling of heterogeneous and dynamic data (citizen-pro- A second challenge is to facilitate the transition from an vided, sensors, official); the visualisation of abstract con- SDI perspective that only addresses relatively few technical cepts in space (e.g. risk, vulnerability, perceived quality of experts towards a spatial information infrastructure, which life); and ways to assess and model reliability and trust in in- is a service providing information products and analyses formation coming from many different sources. Since then, that are of wider use to non-experts. This requires turning the International Society for Digital Earth has mobilised the many of the functionalities and analytical processes encod- broader community of science to articulate further the vision ed in GIS software and usable by few trained geospatial for Digital Earth for 2020, publishing the outcomes in 2013. professionals, into geo-processing services that can operate One could argue that with all the work still underway to in established workflows over the datasets available on the develop and implement INSPIRE, it is not the time to look Web, and provide an answer to questions posed by the many for new organisational and technical challenges and research who are not experts. topics. Yet, it is important never to lose sight of the reasons for The research issues include eliciting and formalising pro- building these infrastructures, and investing significant public cesses and models, turning them into geo-processes which can resources to do so. They are not an end in itself but a means be understood and used across disciplines (which includes ex- to improve Europe’s understanding and stewardship of the en- planation of the theoretical underpinning of models so that they vironment, and develop knowledge-based society. Without a can be used appropriately), ways of selecting the appropriate clear view of where one wants to go and what is needed to get service to go with the appropriate data to contribute to address- there, one will not be able to guide the process effectively, and ing a question in ways that are methodologically robust. address the grand challenges of today and tomorrow.
Towards a next-generation digital earth Max Craglia, European Commission Joint Research Centre The Vespucci Initiative (www.vespucci.org) brought together Digital Earth and Reference Data Unit in 2008 a number of environmental and geographic informa- [email protected] tion scientists to consider the changes that have taken place Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are of the author’s since the 1998 digital earth speech by US Vice President Al alone and do not necessarily represent those of the Joint Research Gore. The meeting was an opportunity to consider the ma- Centre or of the European Commission
The European Commission’s Directorate-General Environment is inviting comments on the implementation of the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) Directive (2007/2/EC). Views are sought from stakeholders including INSPIRE national contact points, regional and local public authorities who produce or use spatial data and services, the academic sector, the private sector and European citizens. Stakeholders can submit their views till Feb 24, 2014. The views are sought to assess whether the actions underway to establish an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community according to the INSPIRE directive are on course to meet the objectives pursued. http://goo.gl/LkJ6Xm
36 / Geospatial World February 2014 Governance & Information Infrastructure/Korea
The Three Gears of NGIS Sharing System, Application, Industrialisation An advanced national SDI is enabling the government and industry in South Korea, and convergence between GI and other fields is important by identifying new opportunities. By Byong Nam Choe & Moo Ik Park
s rapid industrialisation enabled South Korea to ductivity. GI industrialisation was to promote businesses to achieve dramatic economic growth in the seven- meet demands from GI development and application. ties and eighties, the country faced several side Previously completed NGIS masterplans were funda- effects too. Unorganised territorial development, mental to establishing the GI sharing system for facilitating overburdened infrastructure and a number of ac- GI application and industrialisation, and ultimately boosting cidentsA led to weak national competitiveness and overall pro- national competitiveness. ductivity. Then, in the late 1980s, a few local governments The first NGIS master plan (1995-2000) used most of and public organisations in the country understood the ben- its budget to establish geospatial data. During 2001-06, the efits of geospatial data and created repositories on individual budget for GI application exceeded that for data. In 2007 basis to manage facilities. While the organisations gained at and onward, as the graphs show (Page 37), there was again a individual levels, there was no data sharing between them, change in the spending pattern. This is because the pre-2000 leading to continuous duplication of the same geographic digital maps needed updates and there was also the new- data. These were a huge drain on the budgets, and confusion ly created 3D geospatial data. Geospatial policy in Korea due to data mismatch was another serious problem. chronologically developed through various stages — that of With the awareness about the benefits of spatial data data establishment, application development and provision and geospatial technologies growing, the Korean govern- of integrated services. ment initiated its first national geographic information system (NGIS) project in 1995 to enable government or- GI sharing system ganisations, encourage data sharing and minimise data du- NGIS master plan initiated the conversion of analogue maps, plicacy issues. The NGIS is based on a master plan that including topographic maps, cadastral maps, land-use maps, is renewed every five years, and the fourth NGIS project and underground facility maps into digital ones. The entire should have been implemented until 2015. However, it was nation, except the mountainous areas, was subject to digital completed before time and the fifth project was prepared, topographic map in 1:5,000 scale. Digital topographic map which will be launched in 2014. for the mountainous areas was created in 1:25,000 scale, and While each master plan had different focus, they consist- an additional one for urban areas in 1:1,000 scale. ed of the same three gears — geospatial information (GI) Cadastral maps were also digitised with total 37.2 mil- sharing system, GI application and GI industrialisation. GI lion parcels, information that was integral to land manage- sharing system was necessary to avoid duplicating data, ment including ownership, transaction, evaluation, and use. preventing budget waste and data invalidity. GI application The parcel data were highly used in government adminis- managed unorganised land development and natural disas- trations, citizen information services, and private business ters to reduce sectoral inefficiency, enhancing overall pro- activities. Approximately 300 types of land-use zoning
Geospatial World February 2014 / 37 Governance & Information Infrastructure/Korea
maps were also digitised and it was just a click away for application systems. Developed from 1998, LMIS was ini- users to check land-use regulation set for each parcel. tially used to manage, transact, appraise (officially assesses Geospatial data for facilities in urban areas were also land price) and use land. LMIS was integrated with the created from water, sewage, electricity, and communication Parcel-based Land Information Systems (PBLIS) which to gas. The data for underground facilities were especially manages parcel data and ownership information. These two important to avoid disaster due to damage. These datasets systems were further combined and transformed into the were now co-used by different organisations. Korean Land Information Systems (KLIS) in 2004. Land Additionally, other geospatial data, including forest type and cadastral information was important for local govern- maps, geological maps, land-coverage maps, and soil maps ments as a basis of their administrative tasks, thus shared in were created by the NGIS projects. From 2010, 3D geospa- other GI application systems. tial data was created with the help of satellite imagery and Underground facility management information system high-resolution aerial photographs. was also developed to manage water, sewage, gas, electricity, All the geospatial data are currently shared through and communication. The importance of these facilities in the various channels. Each local government body has estab- NGIS project was raised after a gas explosion accident at an lished geospatial data integration system, applying it to underground subway construction site in 1995 that caused different administrative works. These systems from local huge losses. Information system for water and sewage was governments are further integrated into the National Spatial managed by local governments and the respective public or Data Infrastructure System run by the Ministry of Land, private organisations handling gas, electricity and commu- Infrastructure, and Transport. Geospatial data, such as dig- nication services. ital topographic maps, are provided to citizens and private The Korean Planning Support Systems (KOPSS), under sector through the National Spatial Information Clearing- development from 2006 based on spatial analysis method of house. Others, including 3D geospatial data, are also shared GIS, aimed to effectively support urban planning and manage- through Geospatial Information Open Platform. ment, which required more expertise than other administrative agenda. KOPSS presented necessary information during the GI application urban planning process with subjective and scientific bases. Various application systems were developed for adminis- Connection between the geospatial data-based information trative works based on GIS technology. Land Management system and non-geospatial data-based information system was Information Systems (LMIS) was a good example of such one of the recent trends in Korea. For example, architectural
Total Integrated System of NGIS It is an integrated system for sharing geospatial information and new concept service. Korea Land Information System Supports 14 works MOLIT Serves 48 Public services
Private Enterprise Municipalities Underground Facilities Mgmt System Integrates 7 kinds of facilities of 124 organisations, spread over 300,000 km
Open Platform Service 49 national information served National Spatial 8 layer 3D maps Data Integration 19 kinds of 2D maps Research Institutions Centre Central Government 22 kinds of attribute information
76 Systems, 25 organisations are integrated
38 / Geospatial World February 2014 250,00 vices. Geospatial information service on mobile In- ($1= 1067.24 KRW) Sum ternet connection is considered important for com- Data establishment petitive advantage. This is already showing fierce 250,00 growth with the market size expected to touch mul- Application system ti-trillion KRW in the coming years. Trend 250,00 GI-based business offers environment for peo- ple to use myriads of services whenever and wher- ever. Internet portals and mobile communications 250,00 provide different information such as simple loca- tion, restaurant, real-time traffic, oil price, safety, weather, real-estate etc. Location-based services by 250,00 private sector incorporates more diverse contents. All the information for everyday lives will be ac- cessible anytime and anywhere with any kind of 1995 1997 1999 2001 2002 2004 2006 2007 2011 device based on this location-based service. Budget for geospatial data establishment and application system (in million KRW) Future issues administration information system was successfully used for The Korean geospatial policy has shown some noticeable relevant works such as licensing and managing the buildings shifts through its implementation phases. The government ever since its development in 1998. The system was later inter- supply-basis has changed into a user demand-basis. GI ap- connected with KLIS to supplement its shortcomings of limit- plication is now expanded to private sector, which was orig- ed information use on building location and land information. inally triggered by the public sector. Cross-cutting applica- NGIS projects contributed to e-government based on tion has considered inevitable from single-topic application. geospatial data, improving administrative productivity as GI is also utilised to support decision making, rather than well as citizen information service. Instead of visiting a city to simply manage materials such as land-use and facilities. hall for information, people could now access land-use plan Above all, GI value creation mechanism has evolved from details and relevant documents for each parcel through the agency-level value chain to national-level value network. Internet. In 2103, approximately 240,000 land-use planning It is thus inevitable for Korea to develop demand-based certificates were provided to citizens per day. Legally possi- spatial data infrastructure. At present, the biggest issue in ble land-use attributes for each parcel are also easily accessi- the country is the quality of geospatial data. The strategy ble online and has become highly popular with an average of of digitising the pre-existing paper maps owing to budget 37,000 accesses per day. Tourist map, navigation, and public and time crunch, however, has proved to be not a wise one transport information services are also being provided based over time. While they lack fine quality due to data mis- on geospatial data. match and errors during the digitisation process, the cur- rent geospatial data maintenance based on periodic update GI industrialisation gives another difficulty in providing the latest and the most The NGIS project indeed affected the private sector busi- accurate GI database. Limited openness and inconvenient nesses by creating a public geospatial market with data distribution channels are also fundamental hindrances to availability and application development, and facilitating facilitate effective use and application of the data. It is private content business development. Of late, private sec- therefore important to continue the improvement of Na- tor is offering more hybrid geospatial information services. The automobile navigation market is an exemplary case, with most vehicles in Korea now equipped with navigation The NGIS project affected the systems. Another interesting example is the case of a few thousands of screen golf fields which connected golf and ge- private sector by creating a ospatial data for entertainment and leisure. It is now fairly easy to access high-resolution geospatial public geospatial market and data and maps together with other contents on the Internet, facilitating private content and websites in Korea have increased their investments in high-quality map services, both for desktop and portable de- business development
Geospatial World February 2014 / 39 Governance & Information Infrastructure/Korea
tional SDI through task-based update, active openness, and improved distri- bution system of geospatial data. Promotion of geospatial convergence is also on the agenda. There should be focus on creating new industry based on the convergence between the GI and non-GI sectors. Industries such as urban planning, gaming, travel, logistics, and automobiles will interconnect geospa- tial data to create new, high value-add- ed fields and to provide new jobs, thus expanding geospatial market. GI application will be developed further into diverse areas, with the emphasis on geospatial Big Data in particular. GI application will also ac- commodate diverse interests in areas including public health, welfare, med- ical service and entertainment. Korea’s geospatial policy aims to achieve national policy agenda of the ‘Creative Economy and Government 3.0’. An advanced national SDI is nec- essary for this goal, and convergence between GI and other fields is therefore important to suggest new opportunities to the market. GI users and the demands from the users evolve according to different stages of national development. Na- tional SDI system should be equipped with equally evolved mechanism which consists of comprehensive relationships among different variables. Entangled interests among different organisa- tions or people could hinder opening ‘Geospatial and sharing of information, even more than what could be experienced from technological issues. technology
Re Byong Nam Choe, Senior Research Fellow, Korea Research has become Institute for Human Settlements [email protected] Moo Ik Park, Director General of pervasive in Spatial Information Policy Bureau, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure & Transport, South Korea [email protected] our lives’
40 / Geospatial World February 2014 An early adopter of geospatial is one of the reasons Korea is leading in terms of 3D technol- ogy. We have worked on developing an international stand- technology, Korea has excelled ard of 3D data for OGC, and countries all over the world in its use. The NSDI project is have participated in this. If you ask about the status of spatial data infrastructure in its final leg and is benefitting in Korea, I would say we are just below the top of the world, a variety of sectors, says and much ahead of the developing countries. Doe Tae-HO, Deputy Minister, How did Korea deal with national security problems Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and concerns when it came to spatial data sharing and & Transport making it open? The Korean government had two solutions to deal with the ow and when did the National Spatial Data security issues. One is based on the national security law, Infrastructure (NSDI) initiative begin in whereby sensitive national data has been excluded from HSouth Korea? the open data platform. Second, there are two levels to data The NSDI initiative started in the mid-nineties after a couple accessibility on the Internet — while the first is open to all, the of explosions in the underground LNG pipelines. The frame- second level is open only to the user industries. At the second work was formulated in 1995. Interestingly, South Korea start- level, users have to mention why they want to access that ed mapping all its underground assets before moving to land particular data and where it will be used. It is only after obtain- information system in 1998 and parcel-based land information ing their proposal and reasons, the data is delivered to them. system in 1999. The latter two combined to make up the Korea Land Information System (KLIS) in 2004. The Korea Land Information System (KLIS) was one of In the first phase, we concentrated on establishing a frame- the first projects of NSDI. Can you tell us more on the work for geospatial data. Several ministries benefitted from Korean cadastre project? this common database. The core of the second phase com- The cadastre work in Korea is very systematic. Around prised of building the application base, whereby each ministry 3,700 cadastral surveyors work every day at the district level developed its own database. The third phase focused on de- and there are immediate updates. Any Korean citizen can get veloping new technology and the fourth concentrates on ren- details about the authenticity of their land parcel online. ovation, which is transforming the previous application into The Underground Facility Management System is also something new. The private industry voluntarily participated under our ministry. It facilitates management of seven un- in the data sharing process as did many Internet companies. derground facilities (water supply, sewer, electricity, gas, tel- We have recently established an open platform for geospa- ecommunication, oils pipeline, heat). After the underground tial information, for which huge amount of spatial data was gas leak explosions in 1990s every underground facility has collected from different organisations. The open platform is been accurately mapped at a scale of 1:100 and the project designed to integrate and utilise over 800 types of spatial in- was completed in 2012. formation collected by more than 200 munic- ipalities, 76 systems and 23 ministerial organ- What is the progress on the plans for isations. While Korea switching to a 3D cadastre? We are exploring the possibilities of using What is the level of use and adoption of has laws for 3D data and introduced a pilot project in geospatial technology in Korea? 2012. Data collection with the help of GNSS By law, only the urban planning sector under 2D cadastre, and other technologies will go on till 2020, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure & Trans- there are following which a new cadastre system will port (MOLIT) is mandated to use spatial data. be developed. Also, we need to resolve reg- But the technology has become pervasive in our still no laws ulation, institution and ownership issues to lives as both public and private sector are using complete the cadastre system. At the mo- it for productivity gains while policymakers are and taxation ment, there are laws for 2D cadastre, but using it for monitoring and decision making. norms for 3D there are no laws and taxation norms for us- The government has spent lot of time and ing the third dimension. We need to address money to develop new technologies. And this cadastre. that too.
Geospatial World February 2014 / 41 Governance & Information Infrastructure/United States
With the growing value of geospatial data and Back to the technology, FGDC has devised a futuristic Strategic Plan for NSDI which can leverage investments in Future technology and people A screenshot of FGDC’s new website. The NSDI vision plan focusses on Web-based platform new website. The NSDI vision plan focusses on Web-based of FGDC’s screenshot A access to a suite of geospatial data, services, applications and tools that provides
he technology landscape has seen tremendous change In the recent years, remarkable advances in computing power, since the US NSDI was initially conceptualised in the the emergence of open standards and open systems, and the early 1990s. In the years leading up to the 1990s, ad- Internet have reshaped the technology landscape. The availa- vances in mapping and geospatial technology were bility and usage of geospatial information and products have Tlargely driven by the public sector — with Federal agencies dramatically expanded as the software industry has matured playing a major role in the development and coordination of and high-quality data is available through newly implemented data, products, and services. The origins for many of the cur- State and Federal clearinghouses and private sector offerings. rent geospatial innovations and operational successes have Keeping this in mind, the Federal Geographic Data Com- their roots in past government investment in research and mittee (FGDC) has developed an updated Strategic Plan for implementation of computing and communication technolo- the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) of the Unit- gy, geospatial data standards, NSDI framework data develop- ed States. The NSDI Strategic Plan, which covers 2014-2016, ment, the Internet, remote sensors, and the GPS. was approved by the FGDC Steering Committee in December
42 / Geospatial World February 2014 2013. The plan describes a broad national vision for the NSDI, include objectives and actions that describe how the goals will and includes goals and objectives for the Federal government’s be accomplished. While the first strategic goal is to develop role in continued sustainable development of the NSDI. These capabilities for national shared services, the second goal is to define areas of critical importance to the continued develop- ensure accountability and effective development and manage- ment of the NSDI and provide a framework for the Federal ge- ment of federal geospatial resources; and the last goal is to ospatial community’s responsibilities over the next three years. convene leadership of the national geospatial community.
What necessitated the Strategic Plan? » Develop Capabilities for National Shared Services: De- The new NSDI plan is important and timely for several rea- veloping shared services is a vital strategy for delivering sons. First, while the FGDC community has engaged in a se- geospatial solutions faster, for less money, and with fewer ries of strategic initiatives over the past several years, including resources. These enterprise approaches take advantage of the Geospatial Line of Business and Geospatial Platform ini- evolving technologies and methodologies to reduce po- tiatives, the current NSDI strategic plan has not been revised tential duplication, create innovative tools and technology, for a number of years. Second, geospatial technologies, indus- and leverage agency budgets and expertise to accomplish tries, and applications have witnessed tremendous growth and agency mission and support functions more efficiently, change over the past several years, and the strategies need to be while also improving quality. modernised to align with and leverage these changes. The Geospatial Platform initiative is a critical compo- According to the NSDI Vision Statement, “The NSDI lever- nent for the development of the NSDI. It is a Web-based, ages investments in people, technology, data, and procedures to first-generation service environment that provides access create and provide the geospatial knowledge required to under- to a suite of well-managed, highly available, and trusted stand, protect, and promote our national and global interests.” geospatial data, services, applications, and tools for use by Accordingly, the National Spatial Data Infrastructure Federal agencies and their State, Tribal, regional, and local extends far beyond data, encompassing the policies, organ- partners. In addition, the FGDC community and its partners isational responsibilities, data, information, technologies, will utilise the common cloud computing and enterprise standards, services, and financial and human resources nec- acquisition approaches to leverage technology, close pro- essary to achieve this vision. The NSDI has become a critical ductivity gaps, and combine buying power across agencies. vehicle for facilitating seamless data development, informa- tion sharing, and collaborative decision-making across mul- » Ensure accountability and effective development and tiple sectors of the economy. management of Federal geospatial resources: Effective management of geospatial investments will enable Federal The future state agencies and their partners to meet mission responsibilities, The vision of the NSDI for the future is to provide govern- control costs, streamline services, make decisions on elim- ment, businesses, and citizens with a way to visualise and inating duplication, save taxpayer’s money, and drive effi- explore data to derive information and knowledge; to create ciency across the Federal Government. This approach will a network of resources and services for the seamless inte- gration of location-based information into broader informa- tion assets; to serve as an enabling resource for discovery, The NSDI goes beyond data, access, integration, and application of location information for a growing body of users and to leverage shared and open encompassing policies, standards-based services; and focus on applied information for improved decision making. organisation responsibilities, The vision also entails use of real-time data feeds and data, information, sensor webs for improved monitoring, control, situational awareness, and decision making; to facilitate access to and technologies, standards, use of multi-temporal information linked to place; to inte- grate and use advanced technologies and their associated services, and financial and standards and best practices; and to facilitate use of commu- human resources necessary nity-driven open standards with multiple implementations. The NSDI Plan includes a set of three strategic goals. They to achieve this vision
Geospatial World February 2014 / 43 Governance & Information Infrastructure/United States
allow identification of data themes and da- maintain, or use spatial data will be mandated Geospatial tasets most critical for meeting government to either directly or indirectly recognise and and stakeholder needs. FGDC agencies will manage their data as capital assets; facilitate platform also apply the framework of the administra- non-Federal participation in the development timeline tion’s Open Data Policy to manage informa- of the NSDI; and work together through the tion as an asset throughout its life cycle to FGDC to provide for effective and economi- promote interoperability and openness. cal use and management of geospatial data in 2010 This strategic goal describes the actions the the digital environment for the benefit of the Federal geospatial community will take to nation. The agencies also need to ensure that implement portfolio management for more spatial data from multiple sources (Federal, Feb: President’s effectively planning geospatial data collec- State, Tribal, regional and local governments; call for action tion efforts, assessing the status of NGDAs, academia and the private sector) are available June: Launch of oil spill and minimise duplicative investments. and easily integrated to enhance understanding response Web map of the physical, natural, and cultural world. Oct: Draft road map » Convene leadership of the national geospa- issued for review tial community: The Federal Government is The future in a unique position to provide a leadership A number of external factors are driving Oct-Dec: Stakeholder and facilitation role in the national geospa- trends in technology, communications, work- engagement tial community. This role includes providing force, and legal/policy issues of importance to institutional leadership for the development a future NSDI, signalling a need to align the and coordination of national and interna- national geospatial strategy with both main- 2011 tional geospatial standards and policies, stream and emerging IT practices and related integrating geospatial technology into infor- trends. Geospatial technologies provide attrac- mation technology (IT) management pro- tive integrative approaches for meeting current March: Geoplatform.gov cesses, contributing to the development of requirements to do more with less. New ap- redesigned a legal and policy framework that supports proaches are demanded, supported, and must April: Roadmap completed the objectives of the NSDI, and fostering be implemented quickly for technology, col- Aug: Geoplatform updates collaboration across sectors. The Federal laboration, workforce development, funding, introduced at geospatial community can play an important and other resources. This will include raising role in communicating the value of geospa- awareness of the unique aspects of geolocation Esri IUC 2011 tial information and tools to enable informed from a privacy standpoint. Oct: Value proposition analysis and decision-making. Stakeholders With the expanded use of geospatial data completed have identified this strategic goal as a criti- and services, new challenges are arising for the Nov: Geoplatform.gov beta cal responsibility that can be accomplished Federal geospatial community. It has been dif- version launched most effectively by the Federal Government. ficult to express the value and benefit of Feder- al investments in providing geospatial data and A shared vision for the NSDI services when the public can readily access a The Strategic Plan was developed through great deal of such information from both pub- consultation with Federal agencies, the Nation- lic and private sectors through Web-based ap- 2012 al Geospatial Advisory Committee, and with plications and hand-held devices. In addition, partners and stakeholders across the geospatial technology adoption and policy development Feb: Draft business plan community. The FGDC Executive Committee by Federal agencies often cannot keep up with will have the lead responsibility for overseeing the speed of the innovative changing technol- issued for review and monitoring the implementation of the plan. ogy. The role of the Federal sector is evolving June: Business plan A designated Federal official, appointed from and the Federal geospatial community will completed the FGDC Executive Committee, will serve have to be agile and flexible to accommodate 2013 & onwards: as the champion for each strategic goal. The to these changing roles. Ongoing implementation champions will report to the FGDC Executive Committee and Steering Committee. Source: FGDC’s National Spatial Data The federal agencies that produce, collect, Infrastructure Strategic Plan 2014-16
44 / Geospatial World February 2014
Governance & Information Infrastructure/Spain
A Clustre of SDIs Supported by a Community
An SDI of SDIs, the IDEE connects the three levels of government as well as the academia and the private sector. ByAntonio F. Rodríguez
he Spanish Spatial Data Infrastructure or Infrae- cartographic activities being carried out by the Spanish gov- structura de Datos Espaciales de España (IDEE) ernment at national, regional and local levels, included the has evolved from a bottoms-up approach. It em- Working Group for IDEE in its structure. braces nodes from the three levels of government At present, the working group for the IDEE comprises (national, regional and local) to form an SDI of of 239 organisations and over 412 individual members. It TSDIs, with a healthy and collaborative community sharing organises an annual workshop and various forums. In 2010, resources, good practices and experiences. the annual workshop was opened to the Portuguese and IDEE was established in April 2002 along with the IN- Andorran SDI communities under the title of JIIDE (Iberic SPIRE initiative. In that year the Working Group for IDEE Conference on SDI). was also set up. Stakeholders from various public bod- The Spanish NSDI Geoportal was launched in 2004 ies, private companies and academia were included in the and presented in the 10th EC-GI&GIS Workshop in War- Working Group Board. An existing umbrella body, National saw. Currently, it is implementing fourteen main standards Geographic High Council (NGHC) which coordinate the (WMS, WMTS, WMS-C, CSW, Gaz, WFS, Atom, WCS,
Geosalut showing chemists within 1 km radius of a given point.
46 / Geospatial World February 2014 The IDEE geoportal interface
WMC, WCTS, SLD, KML, FTP and WPS), some of them in tal allowing users to know which petrol station sells gas INSPIRE compliant style. The IDEE Geoportal is multilin- cheaper; gual, available in seven different languages, and gives access • And Anthos, an inventory of thousands of vegetal species to a big bunch of 2,448 Web services. (see table 1). showing their geographical distribution on WMS; Client applications have been prepared for giving default A good point to guarantee coordination in this ecosys- access to official WMS, WFS and Gaz. A Web directory of tem of resources, bodies, initiatives, developments and re- service URLs is also provided. The IDEE catalogue is syn- sponsibilities is the role played by the NSDI´s Management chronised via metadata harvesting and XML files interchange Board established by the Law 14/2010, on geographic in- with the rest of available standard catalogues in Spain. frastructures and services in Spain. To carry out this task, From an organisational point of view, a technical coor- NSDI´s Management Board is assisted by the National Cen- dination structure of the project has tre of Geographic Information (CNIG), been set up and it consists of a set Available Web Services an autonomous organisation under the of reference SDI nodes: one nation- Service Number umbrella of IGN Spain that is the Na- al node and 17 regional nodes, one tional Contact Point for INSPIRE, the WMS 1,898 per region. Each reference node has body responsible for the secretariat of the responsibility of giving visibility WMS-C, WMTS 64 the Spanish Standardisation National to all the SDI resources in its scope. Visualization 1,962 Technical Committee (AEN/CTN 148) Some interesting applications have WFS & WCS 302 in the field of geographic information. been implemented from the begin- Datasets download As a result, coordination among the key 119 ning of the project taking advantage (FTP & others) organisations in SDI implementation is of IDEE Web services for example: Download 421 guaranteed. • Goolzoom, a mash-up exploit- CSW 47 ing available WMS in real estate Capacity building Discovery 47 applications; Continuous effort is been made towards Others (WPS, WCTS, • Wikiloc, showing routes for open- 18 awareness, promotion and outreach in- SOAP) air activities on a cartographic teroperability and SDI advantages by background that uses WMS; Total 2,448 means of courses, seminars, conferenc- • Geoportalgasolineras, a geopor- Table 1 es, articles, blogs, e-newsletter and a big
Geospatial World February 2014 / 47 Governance & Information Infrastructure/Spain
Historic SDI of Madrid. An old bullfighting arena can be seen where nowadays there is the Sports Palace of Madrid number of face-to-face meetings. The CNIG team devoted vices providers. And the SDI community is also evolving to SDI also advises and offers support to any organisation in from some kind of ‘Ancien Régime’ that can be symbol- Spain and abroad involved in SDI and/or INSPIRE imple- ised in the old saying ‘Information is power’ (Bacon, XVI mentation and the same role is played by the bodies in charge century) to a ‘Modern paradigm’ based on the theory ‘If of the regional SDIs. you share, you always gain more’ (Rovira & Trías de Bes, Another factor that has significantly contributed to cre- 2004). ate an atmosphere of reliability is the decentralised collabo- rative cartography projects led by IGN Spain in cooperation IDEE spreading its wings with other institutions. These include the Aerial Ortophoto The IDEE envisions following for its future: National Plan (PNOA), covering the entire nation every • Implementation of Web services publishing LiDAR data; three years with orthophoto of resolution 50 cm and 25 cm; • VGI using platforms based on SDI resources; CartoCiudad, a road and street digital map for the whole • Integration of geographic datasets in open data portals; country; and the Spanish Lando Cover and Use Informa- • Data re-engineering for INSPIRE-conformance; tion System (SIOSE) and Territory Observation National • Reuse of PSI following new RISP European directive; and Plan (PNOT) that make possible to share satellite imagery • Geolinked data and standard compliance verification and among governmental bodies. certification. There is great collaboration and open atmosphere among The Spanish NSDI is also involved in some international ac- the Spanish SDI community. Regional and local govern- tivities. It has collaboration with its neighbouring countries ments, universities and companies are aware of the benefits — Portugal, Andorra and France — connecting viewers and of sharing resources and ideas with an excellent spirit of co- application, and buildings technical bridges to have some kind operation and synergy. of horizontal interoperability. Some interesting transnational This was possible because IDEE is based on two basic projects have also been developed, like OTALEX, SNIGII ideas. On one hand, the SDI department was convinced and SDIGER. CNIG is currently working for a pan-European that digital geographic information is a development en- project called European Location Framework (ELF) to gener- gine for the society and a very basic and essential resource ate a pan European Cloud platform and Web services to build than need to be expanded to progress in a globalised on the existing work of the INSPIRE Directive and enable world. On the other hand, the SDI also thinks that open access to harmonised data in cross border applications. data and information sharing is a very good idea. IGN Spain and regional mapping agencies and departments are Antonio F. Rodríguez, Head of SDI Department, changing from being merely data producers to become ser- CNIG (IGN Spain) [email protected]
48 / Geospatial World February 2014
Governance & Information Infrastructure/Interview
Very few senior managers understand the benefits of SDI, feels Derek Clarke, Chief Director, Surveys & Mapping and National Geospatial Information Department of Rural Development & Land Reforms, South Africa. This hampers the progress, particularly with respect to prioritising programmes and budgetary provisions, he argues
‘A successful NSDI can come with
ou have been a champion of spatial data nology. A large amount of the SDI work is driven by people infrastructure in South Africa as well as in who are not at a very senior level and this is hampering the the region. How has been the progress? progress, particularly when it comes to prioritising work and There has been progress, but it has been very budgetary provisions. Yslow because people are still trying to understand and come to terms with what spatial data infrastructure, or SDI, really What is happening on the data sharing front? Have all means. I think it is still at a low level. Very few senior or top data providers agreed to share data? managers are engaging or getting involved with us as they The idea of data sharing is not so much an issue, particularly do not seem to fully appreciate the power of geospatial tech- with public institutions. The problem is that organisations
50 / Geospatial World February 2014 themselves do not know what kind of data is available. Are the provincial or municipal level organisations also a But we are working on that. We have a geo-portal or part of this infrastructure? an electronic metadata catalogue, but that is not function- Provincial or municipal organisations can be part of this, but ing as well as it should be and it will soon be replaced with it is important to identify the base dataset first. There could a new system. be a situation where provincial governments only collect We hope to address several current issues. But the system data for their area of jurisdiction. They could then contribute will only work if the data collectors are posting their meta- to the national dataset. In terms of the governance structure, data into the system. We are trying to develop the system so there could be more than one custodian in some area. In such that it harvests the metadata from the data collectors, thus cases, we have created a system where there will be a coordi- reducing their burden. But we still need to educate the users nating custodian, which will then be guiding the component about the value of metadata — on what is available and the data custodians. suitability of that information. We expect the revised geoportal to be operational by early Does this also facilitate private sector participation? 2014, following which we will get the metadata populated into At present, the law is not applicable for the private sec- the electronic catalogue. Then the big job is to market this to tor and is binding for public organisations only. We cannot the people so that they start using it. We will organise work- prevent a private company from collecting information be- shops with the user community to demonstrate the system, its cause they are doing that on their own cost. But a private usability and benefits. company working on contract for the government is bound by the law as then they are acting as an extension of the You said that organisations are not yet convinced state organ. However, we are looking at amending the Spa- about the importance of data sharing. Are you working tial Data Information Act which will extend to include the towards bringing some policy changes to make this private sector as well. mandatory? A committee on spatial information is in the advanced stag- What mechanisms are being adopted by NGI to make es of implementing two policies. The first is a policy on the data easily accessible to users? pricing, which will be applicable for all public organisations, All our data is supplied only at the cost of the paper on which where we are trying to standardise how different entities will the map is printed. This can be accessed through the Web as charge for data. well. We do have a geoportal, but owing to the low band- Primarily, we believe the cost accrued by a data supplier width in South Africa, accessing very large files on the In- [for procuring that data] should be charged for, while the ternet is difficult. However, this will change with the launch information itself should come free of cost. However, the of the redeveloped portal. We are using OGC standards for supplier can charge for adding value to a product, but that WFS and WMS services, which will be available through should be based on a rational costing model. There is an ex- that. We also want to provide a Web cartography service, emption provision, but one has to apply to the ministry and where the users will be able access the information online explain the reasons for availing that. instead of downloading. Another policy is to define and elaborate on the responsi- bilities of custodians of fundamental datasets. We will iden- tify and appoint different data custodians for base datasets and there is a set of responsibilities attached to it. Very closely related to this policy is the issue of data du- All our data is supplied only plication. The legislation is very strong on the principle of at the cost of the paper on data sharing and bars unnecessary duplication. Base dataset custodians will need to register a data capture project to let which the map is printed. others know what kind of data they are collecting and or- ganisations which are not custodians of base datasets will be This can be accessed prohibited from collecting data unless they have been given through the Web as well. clearance for it by the committee for spatial information. This will minimise duplication. The pricing policy is now We also want to provide ready to be presented to the minister for his final approval, following which it will become a law. Web cartography service
Geospatial World February 2014 / 51 Governance & Information Infrastructure/Interview
NGI has the largest and most extensive archive of aerial photography and imagery dating back to 1926. Currently, images are captured in RGB and CIR as can be seen from this Cape Town image captured in 2008
How does the SDI contribute to the economic develop- Indonesia recently did so for better coordination and ment of South Africa? greater relevance and contribution. Are there any such There are three pillars to what we have been talking about — initiatives in South Africa? availability, accessibility and usability. As a national map- No, not at this stage, but I think this is one area that needs ping organisation and an SDI agency, NGI needs to make serious attention. I believe in having a single logical data sure we are looking at those three aspects. I don’t think we model but physically you can have distributed databases. can have a successful NSDI if these three things are not Therefore, different organisations can have defined respon- working properly and are not working together. sibilities as long as their roles and responsibilities are clear. Availability means availability of relevant and up-to-date For example, the agriculture department may have some information. Accessibility includes the knowledge of the data, say about soil, which they can share with the soil data availability of the information and the issue of affordability. custodian, but there has to be a central organisation that If the data is too expensive, it becomes inaccessible. There oversees and coordinates this. I see this as an issue and some are issues of semantics as well. That is the connection be- institutional rearrangement is required for such activity. tween the user and the data collector — are we talking in a Personally, I don’t think the NSDI should be administered language the user can understand? Then there are issues of by a line function department. It should be with an agency data privacy, data sharing and principles of creating once and that is more cross-cutting through the government. For ex- using many times. ample, the Planning Commission is an organisation that has I think the one neglected the most is the issue of usability. involvement or participation in almost every sphere through- We have this information available, we can make it accessi- out the country and I think NSDI should be with it. Also, we ble, but can the user use it? Do they know how to use it? Do need to bring statistics and the NSDI together or within the they know how to benefit? Can they answer the questions same organisation, because statistics and geoinformation are they want to answer with this information? We need to take the most fundamental of datasets that the government needs care of these issues. for planning, policy formulation and development. If there is a correct institutional arrangement for this, we can do a far There is a trend among countries to have all geospatial better job than what we are doing currently. I think there is a related agencies under one department. For instance, lot of room for improvement in that area.
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Brought to you by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation GEOINTSYMPOSIUM.COM Governance & Information Infrastructure/Chile A Collaborative Model to Decentralise SDI Chile has brought ministries Information and regional authorities on one
he national spatial data infrastructure has been un- platform to enable effective dertaken by the Chilean government to improve the management, delivery and generation, access and availability of geospatial in- formation to support development of public policies sharing of geospatial information, and decision making in various fields. The Chilean thus unifying many systems and TSDI was conceived as a network of public institutions which manage spatial information, whether as creators or users and standardising the data formats. targets availability of information to all users. The history of SDI Chile dates back to the mid-’90s By Matías Fortuño Soto & when the use of GIS had begun to grow. However, this led Alvaro Monett Hernández to a series of problems related to the generation and use of geospatial information. In addition to ignorance about the for editing and use of standards, among others. usefulness of such data and technologies, there was inter- From the point of view of inter-agency coordination with nal discord between institutions on data sharing, accuracy ministries and utilities, bilateral working relationships were of existing information, data duplicacy and incompatibility, established to support the implementation of sectoral SDIs among others. and collaborative tasks were shared by several institutions. Finally, the National Territorial Information Coordination In this context, clusters and thematic forces have been gen- System, or SNIT, was formed in 2006 under the Ministry of erated for different purposes, with the goal of empowering National Assets, which established its functions and organi- the national SDI. An example of this is illustrated in the con- sational structure and the duties of public bodies in relation formation of the thematic areas of the SDI (affinity group to information management. Today, SDI Chile is in a consol- of institutions in the content of the information generated), idation phase; work is currently focused on establishing the aimed at defining priorities and technical specifications of institutional and technological conditions that will generate the priority data for the country’s basic information, infra- better geospatial information and promote its effective use. structure, land-use planning, natural resources, social de- velopment and equity. Other national needs have led to the Organisational model creation of working groups, for instance, to develop national SDI Chile has an organisational model based on a solid standards for interoperability between geoportals of political structure of coordination, which proposes that each of the and administrative divisions of the country. 20 ministries and 15 regional institutions, that is part of it, In addition to observing a model of distributed organi- be responsible for generating, maintaining and publishing sation, the SDI operates in a decentralised way. Each of the geospatial information relating to its institutional mission. 15 regional governments are, in close coordination with the They have to conform to the standards, specifications and Executive Secretariat, leading the implementation of its SDI, techniques of the SDI Chile’s Executive Secretariat to form often incorporating players who are not part of government an interconnected network of Web information services. services. Significantly, 14 of the 15 regions already have their Furthermore, the development of skills for handling infor- own SDI and geospatial information portal operational. mation at various stages (generation, analysis, integration and publication) is crucial. That is why the Executive Secretariat is The results are for all to see also mandated to organise training workshops on software use Chile SDI Viewer, one of the most important products, from
54 / Geospatial World February 2014 A screenshot of the Visor system
the Ministry of National Assets, was built by the same in- International participation stitution that aims to make land information available and In the international sphere, Chile is an active participant in provide background for decision making. Called Visor, the the Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) system currently displays information generated by 15 min- initiative led by the United Nations, which is embodied in the istries and 20 public services. The information is arranged in operation of an expert committee that addresses issues such as layers and is freely available to all users at www.ide.cl. On- geospatial information for managing natural hazards, global line updation of information is allowed for institutions using map for sustainable development, integration of statistical and WMS protocols. Visor has been received with enthusiasm geographical information and others. by stakeholders in the public, private and academic sectors. At the continental level, the Executive Secretariat of SDI The objective of the SDI was to have an organised frame- Chile is Vice President of the initiative called ‘UN-GGIM work with human and technological resource to provide ge- Americas’, which is the regional expression of UN-GGIM. ospatial information to institutional management, and also This organisation is focused on supporting the member coun- to share it with other organisations. In some cases, large tries in their national SDI processes, through the dissemina- institutions with many directions and dependent utilities tion of good practices, training opportunities and experiences (such as the Ministry of Public Works and the Ministry of of policies and institutional framework implementation. Agriculture) have managed to unify systems by working Interestingly, the Ministry of National Assets has a bilat- with databases of unique and standardised data, and deploy eral partnership with South Korea in the field of land man- information from corporate geoportals. Many other minis- agement, geomatics and cadastre for exchange of experienc- tries have implemented their geospatial data infrastructure es, knowledge and building capacity. in the areas of environment, mining, energy, urban planning, development and social justice. Challenges ahead For the regions, the challenge remains the integration of Despite the progresses made so far, there are some challenges geospatial information generated at different territorial lev- to address in the short and medium term. They include: els, which requires close coordination. Some regions have • Maintaining the local information generated by the 345 had outstanding results, such as Los Ríos in south Chile, municipalities, particularly for digitisation and building where the regional government (institution in charge of the private land registers. regional coordination of geospatial information) developed a • Engaging citizens in the generation of geospatial infor- management model at the municipality levels. mation by generating necessary validation mechanisms. The model of collaborative organisation pervades the • Pushing for implementation of the WFS standard in order process of developing a new institutional structure, in par- to enable download of online information while maintain- ticular for the formulation of a national policy for geospatial ing intellectual property of the data. information, which will define over the coming years the • Propagating the usefulness of geospatial information in strategic direction for the management of public institutions. all areas of problem solving and decision making. The objectives and strategic guidelines are structured around four areas — generation of geospatial information, access Matías Fortuño Soto, Executive Secretary, SNIT IDE and use, interoperability and institutional framework. Many Chile, Ministry of National Assets, [email protected] public institutions and authorities participated in formulating Alvaro Monett Hernández, Executive Secretariat, SNIT this proposal. IDE Chile, Ministry of National Assets, [email protected]
Geospatial World February 2014 / 55 Governance & Information Infrastructure/Abu Dhabi SDI Strengthens g-Governance The Abu Dhabi SDI is empowering the government and society with convenient, open access to high-quality and up-to-date geographic information and spatially enabled e-government services.
bu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates The operations team at the Spatial Data Centre (SDC) is (UAE), lies on a T-shaped island jutting into the utilising the ArcGIS suite of software for data processing, Persian Gulf. Today, Abu Dhabi houses key initi- data review and assessment, publication of map services, atives on sustainable energy, economic, and envi- and GIS analysis and cartography for special projects. Esri ronmentalA leveraging advanced technologies. As such, the technology has also been used in developing the AD-SDI timely collection, preservation, and distribution of relevant clearinghouse and associated metadata catalogue and the geospatial data are critical to maintain its spatial data infra- supporting services based on ArcGIS Server technology and structure and ensure the smooth running of the emirate’s the REST and SOAP interfaces, in addition to mobile GIS many governmental and commercial activities. applications based on the ArcGIS Mobile solution. Other The Abu Dhabi Spatial Data Infrastructure (AD-SDI) is an map viewers were built using Flex and Java APIs. initiative administered within the Abu Dhabi Systems and In- A dedicated AD-SDI staff is in place to facilitate, pro- formation Centre (ADSIC) to facilitate the sharing of geospa- mote, coordinate, and support the AD-SDI initiative with tial data among government agencies and other stakeholders. various member entities. Venues for such cooperation and As part of Abu Dhabi’s ambitious e-government programme, collaboration with entities include facilitating the AD-SDI AD-SDI is empowering the government and society with con- Technical Committee meetings and discussions; developing venient, open access to high-quality and up-to-date geographic and implementing agreed-upon standards for geospatial data information and spatially enabled e-government services. maintenance and update; and mobilising working groups In Abu Dhabi, government entities have invested heavi- and special interest groups in key areas of common interest, ly in GIS technology and geospatial data to meet their own such as environment, utilities, and public safety and security. organisational needs. The emirate is now in an excellent po- Now in the third stage of a three-stage process, the in- sition to leverage that investment by establishing the neces- itiative has almost 40 government and quasi-government sary institutional capabilities that are needed to support more entities involved, with more expected to join this year. As effective sharing and utilisation of geospatial information. part of the community development, ADSIC is in the pro- AD-SDI was conceived to provide that framework. cess of developing service-level agreements and licensing arrangements with each entity that spell out what data will Establishing the AD-SDI initiative be provided, the timing of periodic updates, and access and In June 2007, ADSIC launched the AD-SDI initiative to provide use restrictions for the data each is providing. In addition, a framework of standards, policies, data, procedures, technolo- a geo-legal policy has been mobilised to work on strength- gy, and capable staff to facilitate and support the effective use ening aspects of the legal framework to address issues that and sharing of geospatial information in Abu Dhabi. Incorpo- have special relevance to geospatial matters, such as securi- rated into AD-SDI are a data clearinghouse, geospatial portal, ty, privacy, and intellectual property rights. and website, as well as an extensive programme for community engagement, organisation, coordination, and establishment of Value of standardisation formal agreements for data provision and sharing. Standards, including the appropriate data, technology, and pro-
Highlights • The operations team uses GIS for data processing, data review and assessment, and publication of map. • ArcGIS Server and ArcGIS Mobile solutions aid in developing the AD-SDI clearinghouse and associated metadata catalogue. • The AD-SDI geoportal provides access to the data clearinghouse from which more than 300 map layers are being made available to the community.
56 / Geospatial World February 2014 cedures, are essential to ensure interoperability across the AD- SDI community. Integrating existing GIS data and procedures across the AD-SDI community is a matter of proactive stake- holder engagement and consultation to avoid redundant and often inconsistent spatial datasets. Today, the Emirate’s fun- Courtesy: Esri damental geospatial datasets (FGDS), such as cadastral data, orthoimagery, elevation data, transportation, land use, soils, and utility networks, are maintained by relevant government organisations. The entities are streamlining their workflow to update the spatial data they are responsible for by recording changes on the ground as they occur as part of their business processes. This approach of transaction-based data mainte- nance ensures that spatial data is updated and delivered to the AD-SDI community in a timely manner. A geospatial metadata catalogue is another significant fac- tor in maintaining standardisation in AD-SDI, as it provides a master inventory of the fundamental data and geospatial ser- vices available. All the layers in the data clearinghouse have Courtesy: Department of Municipal some level of metadata that is accessible through the geoportal. Affairs, Abu Dhabi Municipality The metadata catalogue was originally compiled by the AD- SIC team, but responsibility of maintaining of this information Abu Dhabi large-scale basemap is being transferred to the custodian agencies as a condition within the service-level agreements. Organisations using Esri either instituted or are planning to institute their own Web- products can maintain their data through the ArcGIS Desktop. based mapping services for internal and public use. Others can update their information through the geoportal, once authorised to do so, or through any ISO standards-based Potential savings metadata maintenance tool. The essential value of AD-SDI is widely recognised across the community, and huge cost savings are already being re- Geoportal is the key alised in several ways: The ultimate goal of the AD-SDI initiative is to create a seam- • All spatial data maintained by organisations for their own less network of interoperable nodes — geospatial portals — business purposes is now standardised according to the that will provide easy access to all geospatial information in broader needs of the community, leading to improved and the emirate. Currently, both government and publicly accessi- newer usages of the data, thereby leveraging the value of ble geoportals have been set up, and the information available the data investment many times over. is being expanded and updated on an ongoing basis. • Previously, spatial data projects could be launched by in- The AD-SDI geoportal provides access to the data clear- dividual government entities. Now, the AD-SDI Technical inghouse from which more than 300 map layers are being Committee is included in the procedure, which leads to made available to the community. Data is now being kept better alignment of the projects for the common needs of current, as the custodian entities periodically submit updates the community and avoids costly and redundant data ac- to the ADSIC team, which runs the data through proce- quisition. dures to ensure that the new information is consistent with • The top leadership is now being provided with access to accu- the agreed-upon standards. The geoportal is being used as rate and up-to-date information in a reliable and timely man- a common reference for viewing existing data, and a few ner, empowering it to make informed decisions. users are now employing thick-client access to map services. The implementation of these portals will lead to a greater Many organisations in the AD-SDI community have im- sharing and utilisation of spatial data in Abu Dhabi. The par- plemented or are planning to implement their own geoportal ticipating organisations are now routinely adding new users nodes. The Environment Agency in Abu Dhabi has been op- as more people become aware of what is available and how erating its node for over two years, and other entities, such as it can be used in their work. the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority, Department of Municipal Affairs, and Urban Planning Council, have Courtesy: ESRI
Geospatial World February 2014 / 57 Governance & Information Infrastructure/Bogota A Smart City Indeed! Bogota’s IDECA has become a role model in the whole of Latin America in producing, managing and sharing geographic information for development projects. By Jasmith A. Tamayo B
A screenshot of Maps of Bogota
ogotá DC is among one of the 10 most competi- focus on integrating all the official geographical information tive cities in Latin America, according to the local of the Capital District to position itself as a smart city. This magazine Dinero. Major development projects involves making available data and services that respond to implemented in the recent years have made the specific needs for decision-making about planning and de- Colombian capital a pioneer in many areas of ap- velopment by administrative authorities and citizens alike. Bplication of cutting-edge technology. IDECA has become a role model not only in the city of Bogotá DC was not immune to the changes wrought by Bogota but also in the whole of Colombia and even entire the introduction of geotechnologies in public administration Latin America in producing, managing and giving access to and business management. For these reasons, it became nec- geographic information. essary to create effective mechanisms to permit timely avail- ability of quality geospatial information to support the range Geographic information services of sectoral, local and regional projects that are deployed in Web services offered and managed in conjunction with the and from the national capital district. The Infrastructure of district community allow a better flow of information, ensur- Spatial Data for the Capital District (or IDECA) is respon- ing the availability of reliable and timely data. sible for promoting collaborative strategies to manage geo- Tu Bogotá: Tu Bogotá is a new application that can identi- graphic information based on official policies and standards, fy, through an interactive map, variables to make decisions using technological tools that enable information manage- about housing or investment in the capital within a search ra- ment and facilitate the development of institutional strate- dius of 0.5 to 2 km. It can also be shared on social networks. gies for best practices related to the data lifecycle. IDECA is The application gives the per-sq-km value of a land, loca- a government initiative of City Hall, which has been consol- tion of nearby parks, tourism and entertainment destinations idated since 2004. and rates user experience according to 13 variables taken Headed by the Special Administrative Unit of the Cadas- from official city information. The tool also allows users tral Office, Bogotá has been developing several projects that to report the real estate offers and civic needs for different
58 / Geospatial World February 2014 sectors of the city (health, education, culture, trade, tourism, social security, risk, mobility, environment, public space). In addition, users can upload a related image, a description of the need and a contact email. Reference Map: As a main strategy to consolidate a single source of geo-referenced information on the city, the Reference Map provides an organised set of common spa- tial data required by most institutions of Bogotá. The Refer- ence Map consists of 29 layers of information as open data and it is updated on a quarterly basis by each custodial in- stitution and available to the community through the portal www.ideca.gov.co. Bogotá’s Maps Portal: It is a new tool based on the infor- A screenshot of the IDECA portal giving geodesic applications. mation and communications technologies applied to the management of geographic information in the Capital Dis- Achievements & challenges trict. The portal meets ‘spatialised information’ from various IDECA has been behind the launch and execution of a number public institutions on issues of security, mobility and social of major projects such as the Integral Road Network, Infra- services, which are some of the topics for daily and frequent structure of Network and Public Services or IRSP (constituted consultation. This tool is intended for all types of users — with a cadastre of networks of Bogota’s public services), set- ordinary citizens, enterprises, official agencies, private- or ting up of the SDI in Cundinamarca (a major city in Colum- ganisations, curators, notaries, town planners, investors, re- bia), and the establishing a geospatial platform for putting on searchers, tourists etc — and is a clear example of ICT as a cloud the data, services and applications related to Bogota. tool for good governance. The regulation and implementation of nine geographic Registration System of Geographic items: A Web tool de- information policies (production, metadata, custody, dispo- veloped for the creation, approval, publication and mainte- sition, access and use, among others) in the district helps in nance of geographical items, its main objective is to allow legitimising the task of IDECA and facilitates the dialogue concerted allocation of identifiers and unique meanings that with authorities, companies and citizens, besides providing contribute to the definition of a useful common language for attention to their own concerns and initiatives. A very en- the development of new information systems in the Capital couraging result of IDECA has been the consolidation of District, thereby ensuring reliability and interoperability. the district community on issues related to management of Additionally, this system plays an important role in geographic information. Local administrative officials could controlling and monitoring the production of geographic now be made aware about the importance of access and use information, by allowing the storage of descriptions of of- of geographic information in decision-making and commu- ficial information produced and identifying their respective nity services. custodian. Bogota, with its Infrastructure in place, is ready to take a Management System of Geographic Metadata: One of the giant leap further by relying on information, or more specif- policies that led to the creation of IDECA is related to geo- ically geographic information, the key input in the planning graphic metadata, which aims to document the geographic and development of the city. The authorities must recognise information of the Capital District through standardised and the importance of involving and promoting collaborative technically advanced metadata management processes to fa- work between its members as a mechanism to improve the cilitate their availability, access, use and exchange. quality and relevance of the services. Work is on the dis- This system is a Web application developed to allow dif- ciplinary research paradigm of SDIs, which is expected to ferent users to discover, access and use information and/or contribute in the medium term for the construction of new geographic services generated or obtained by IDECA mem- knowledge that useful for the development of a smart city bers, such as documents, maps, images, studies, etc. Addi- like Bogota, fast advancing on the information highway to- tionally, it allows the creation, validation, publication and wards being called spatially enabled. maintenance of metadata. The main users of this system are entities and public sector institutions, private, academia and Jasmith A. Tamayo B. general citizens interested in accessing and using geographic Manager, Spatial Data Infrastructure Bogota data and services of Bogotá D.C. [email protected]
Geospatial World February 2014 / 59 Governance & Information Infrastructure/Smart City
Spatial information is the basis for a city’s core operational systems. A strong geospatial foundation is therefore fundamental for providing accessible, reliable and responsive services to citizens. By Jim Dobbs
rban theorist Jane Jacobs called cities “problems in system of systems from an IT perspective — is to establish organised complexity”. Consider Jacobs’s example a firm foundation. For municipalities, that foundation starts of a public park. A park’s use depends on its design. with geospatial data since an efficient geospatial platform Design depends on potential use. Potential use, in places all other data in a real-world in physical and visual turn, depends on access and other factors. And so context. “Geospatial information is the key because all the Uon. These conditions impact the park independently, while also other information we are collecting — on the roads, public working collectively to define it. The relationships are complex transportation routes, sewer systems, smart meters, etc — and interconnected; a change to one affects all. has to be shown on the map,” adds Conesa. Cities are, essentially, a system of systems, and these are under increasing pressure globally. In 2011, the world popula- The geospatial foundation tion reached 7 billion. Much of that growth has been and will Spatial information is the basis for a city’s core operation- continue to be in cities. The United Nations projects that 70% al systems and, ultimately, for the services they provide. A of the world population will live in cities by 2050. This mas- strong geospatial foundation helps cities better manage their sive influx will strain public services and city infrastructure. assets and the thousands of incidents that occur each day. It While completely replacing old infrastructure is unrealis- is the platform on which solutions are built. tic, better management and maintenance through technology Cities are building this system of systems in stages and in — such as the effort to transform cities into technology-led ways that fit their circumstances. One good example is the City smart cities — may be the best solution. of Edmonton in Canada, one of the first cities to convert all its “The goal is to get information in real time and to use it data to digital format, making that transformation in the 1970s. in order to increase the quality of life, reduce environmental To obtain fast and reliable access to asset and infrastructure impact and increase the efficiency of city services,” says Pilar information, Edmonton developed a central repository for GIS Conesa, director of the Smart Cities World Congress, and for- data — the Spatial Land Inventory Management (SLIM) appli- mer Chief Information Officer for Barcelona. cation. The SLIM application manages a vast amount of loca- The first step in the process — to convert the city into a tion-based information, including registered parcels of proper-
60 / Geospatial World February 2014 ty, zoning boundaries, roads, transit lines, utility infrastructure Quicker emergency response and the conditions of parks, sidewalks and cemeteries. The geospatial foundation and connectivity between systems With this foundation in place, the city has geospatial- also aids in the safety of the public and city infrastructure. ly enabled its departments to perform tasks in a faster and Edmonton uses a ‘one city’ approach — where municipal pub- smarter way using map-based data. In doing so, the data lic safety organisations share spatial data and a common map. becomes operational, as part of workflows tied to specific For instance, the Edmonton Fire Rescue Services (EFRS) challenges such as infrastructure planning and public safety. provides fire suppression and rescue, as well as hazardous material cleanup. Because immediate response is critical to Better planning, safer roads protecting lives and property, the demand for accurate, relia- Spatial analysis is central to Edmonton’s efforts to improve ble and faster routing and dispatch is high. traffic safety. The city, which experiences 25,000 traffic colli- The agency’s computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system, the sions each year on an average costing it more than $500 mil- core of public safety operations, is integrated with the SLIM lion annually, created an Office of Traffic Safety in 2006. The database. This allows municipal GIS datasets to be configured goal of the office, the first such municipal traffic safety office into the CAD system to improve dispatch and routing to in- in North America, is to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries. cident locations. Responders can use a common map view to It processes, analyses and reports traffic safety data, such quickly and easily share information about emergency events. as collisions, traffic volume, road geometry and more, to “As a city, we are expanding in all four directions at the same identify spatial patterns and target locations best suited for time, and that puts a lot of strain on service,” says Graeme safety improvement. Leveraging the SLIM application, the Hubbick, Deputy Fire Chief, Edmonton. “Getting that geospa- office enters police collision reports into a database and geo- tial information out to our crews is vital.” codes the information using street names to create unique The Fire department’s CAD system also automatically reference points. “With a solid geo-coding structure, it be- shares dispatch notifications with Alberta Health Services, comes easy to create maps based on collision frequency,” which is responsible for delivering health care and EMS in the says Brandt Denham, GIS analyst. “It gives us a quick and city and province. The fire dispatch system notifies Alberta easy way to understand where the worst areas are.” Health Services when a fire event requires emergency med- By understanding collision frequency, the city can then per- ical support, while the EMS dispatch system notifies the fire form advanced statistical and spatial analysis, integrating traffic agency when a medical event requires fire rescue assistance. volume, road characteristics, speed data and collision locations. According to Jim Garland, Executive Director of Alberta The result is a performance index, which tells how a specific Health Services, this system-to-system communication is crit- location is performing compared to others. Locations are then ically important: “One of our concerns was seamless dispatch ranked and mapped based on their potential for improvement. of emergency services — the ambulances, and then the fire For instance, the office determined that a section ofa and police when required. This technology allowed seamless street was experiencing 55% more collisions than expect- real-time dispatching of resources at the same time.” ed. Analysis revealed that peak shopping periods at a local Possessing accurate map data and improving emergen- shopping mall created high traffic volume. When combined cy routing ensures the continued success of Edmonton Fire with multiple parking lot entrances, this situation resulted in collisions based on drivers following others too closely. The traffic safety office also manages photo radar and inter- section safety sensors as part of automated traffic safety en- forcement. Vehicles equipped with photo radar are parked at regular, spatially locatable sites, while sensors are installed at fixed locations at intersections throughout the city. Based on this data, the office can map high-risk locations and even identify unsafe drivers. These approaches help the city and “allocate limited resources to where they will make the biggest impact,” according to Denham. In addition to improving safety, reduction in collision also affects the city’s bottom line by saving money at mul- tiple levels. Since 2006, the office’s efforts to reduce colli- sions have resulted in more than $780 million in savings. A screenshot of the map service on the official Egmonton city government site.
Geospatial World February 2014 / 61 Governance & Information Infrastructure/Smart City
cidents] in a more proactive fashion?” he adds. In addition to public safety, the system also ensures the safety of transit personnel by tracking their location. By integrating with au- tomatic vehicle location technologies, it knows when they are dispatched, when they arrive and where they are located. Beyond safety and security, the CAD system is also cen- tral to core transportation system operations. Edmonton Tran- sit uses it to ensure reliability of service, including bus fleet An ETS dispatcher monitors a map-based safety and security system dispatching and maintenance. “If a bus breaks down, we now have a means of tracking that and identifying the problem,” Rescue’s Quick Accept system. The CAD system enables says Gabruck. “Lesser number of bus breakdowns means creation of a “Quick Accept” for emergency calls, which more reliability in service and happier customers.” dispatches units while the emergency call-taker is still on the The management and analysis of this spatial and tempo- phone taking information and feeding data to the field units ral incident data helps Edmonton Transit make its operations using mobile technology. Dispatch teams can share pre-in- more cost effective, points out Gabruck. “Time of dispatch, cident planning information, such as road closures and out- time of arrival, time on scene… All this helps me when I of-service hydrants. This information is placed in the CAD am making business decisions to bring on extra resourcing. common map, so response teams can arrive on the scene faster I have a business case based on actual data that I can use.” and receive and update emergency events at the scene in their vehicles. The CAD system, integrated with current municipal Further innovation GIS data, is bringing the agency closer to its goal of being on- Improved services and lower costs enabled by common geo- scene within four minutes of a fire truck leaving the station. spatial data and improved workflow management is only the “The Quick Accept process alone has already shortened EFRS beginning. Building on that foundation, Edmonton delivers response times by at least 30 seconds,” points out Hubbick. additional solutions across its municipal agencies, incorpo- rating enterprise data management, data visualisation, 3D More efficient public transportation analyses, cloud computing, business intelligence and more. This efficiency extends to the city’s public transit system, And with the explosion of mobile devices — where every- which is under increasing demands for additional services. one can become a data-collecting sensor — officials are ex- The Edmonton Transit System consists of more than 900 tending operational systems into the field by putting more buses, 74 light rail trains and 21 km of track. It uses a sim- capabilities into the hands of employees, literally. ilar CAD system for response — integrated with the SLIM One of Edmonton’s projects is a smart planning effort database — as the city’s fire, police and emergency medical that allows city workers and officials to track the condition organisations. Because the transit agency has additional re- of assets at more than 460 parks. Using a rugged tablet com- sponsibility for transit security, its CAD system is linked to puter coupled with GIS software, the Parks Branch person- a network of security cameras, alarms and public emergency nel can capture, report, analyse and share data on benches, telephones. Edmonton’s system was Canada’s first integrat- children’s playground equipment, picnic areas and other as- ed transportation security system. sets in real time. With this information, the department can The agency combines geospatial data with incident re- prioritise and improve maintenance in the largest expanse of ports to detect patterns. It can, for example, see when inci- urban parkland in North America. dents increase near a particular bus stop or light rail terminal, Building from a strong geospatial foundation, cities like and thus deploy more security officers in that area. The di- Edmonton can empower various municipal departments to vision is even starting to apply predictive analysis.“We use better connect with residents through more dynamic capabil- geospatial referencing to deploy our resources in the most ities. The result for citizens is more accessible, reliable and effective fashion,” says Ron Gabruck, Director (Safety & responsive services. Security), Edmonton Transit. Every safety and security in- As Jane Jacobs noted, cities are complex, but not disor- cident is catalogued, including time and location. This infor- ganised. By using data more effectively — to see, under- mation is put into an algorithm to produce a ‘hot spot’ map. stand and act — cities are becoming smarter every day. “Instead of random patrols, we know that we are likely to be busy at a certain time and at a certain location. Why Jim Dobbs, Executive Manager (Global Communications), not go there from the beginning and fend off [potential in- Intergraph SG&I (a part of Hexagon)
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publication ad_ FEb 2014.indd 3 1/30/2014 6:43:21 PM Governance & Information Infrastructure/Monitoring Funds Flow Tracking Development via effective Aid Management Publicly accessible geo-coded database of development projects helps underdeveloped countries to track where and how aid is flowing in, plan projects and monitor progress, thus improving the
effectiveness of aid and aiddata.org Source: donor coordination. By In one interactive interface, policymakers, practitioners and citizens can compare data on $40 trillion in remittances, foreign direct investment and aid from 90 donor agencies on aiddata.org. A state-of-the-art Samantha Custer GIS interface allows users to upload their own data, as well as create, save and share maps.
“Technology doesn’t come after you deal with poverty, but is cooperation,” explains AidData Co-Executive Director Nancy a tool you use to alleviate poverty.” McGuire Choi. — James Wolfensohn, former World Bank President Spatial information is vitally important to the basic ap- proach of AidData. As Choi explains, “Shedding light on ach year, billions of dollars are spent by an in- the geographic dimension of aid can have a powerful and creasingly diverse set of countries, international catalytic effect on the impact of development”. Since 2009, institutions and private foundations with the goal AidData has contributed to improving donor coordination of improving the lives and livelihoods of citizens and the effectiveness of aid through creating a publicly ac- in developing countries. Is development assistance cessible geo-coded database of development activities with Ecapable of achieving these aspirations? The answer largely extensive project-level detail. In addition to providing this hinges upon tracking how decisions are made, with what in- global public good, AidData designs customised data solu- formation and who is involved in the process. tions for myriad government, bilateral and multilateral insti- AidData, a research and innovation lab tracking over $40 tutional clients. trillion in development finance is a partnership with the Col- AidData’s unique contribution is as an infomediary. “Gov- lege of Development Gateway, an independent not-for-profit ernments and international organisations have a responsibility organisation, the College of William & Mary and Brigham to their taxpayers, member states, and intended beneficiaries to Young University. The partnership was born out of the need to disclose information about what they are doing and where they increase aid effectiveness by providing products and services are doing it, but this information is often released in formats promoting dissemination, analysis, and understanding of de- that are difficult to aggregate, visualise, and analyse. AidData velopment finance information. “This innovative partnership fills this gap by serving as an infomediary between the suppli- came about [when we saw that] our three institutions were tak- ers of raw data and the end users who need to make sense of ing complementary approaches to the same problem. Big de- the data for research, advocacy, or decision-making purposes,” velopment challenges can’t be solved without a high degree of explains Brad Parks, AidData’s other Co-Executive Director.
64 / Geospatial World February 2014 To date, AidData has geocoded development portfolios better systems to make sense of all this aid information, “cre- of the World Bank (143 countries) and the African Devel- ates a strong incentive for [countries to take the transparency opment Bank (53 countries), as well as partnering with the pledge] and go public with their aid information management governments of Nepal, Malawi, Uganda, Senegal, Haiti, Ti- systems”, underscores Parks. mor-Leste to geocode all donors within their aid manage- ment platforms — an aid information management system Building capacity supported by Development Gateway. There are several components to be addressed in strengthen- This geocoded investment data is the building block for ing the supply of relevant, and thereby, useful aid information. creating maps and dashboards that anyone can use to easily Beyond aggregate financial information and country-level visualise project activities and finance flows. While mapping strategies, publicly accessible documentation on specific de- sub-national financial flows is interesting, it is even more velopment activities at the project level is needed. Second, do- revealing to mash up different spatial layers to compare the nors should report on the locations where development inter- distribution of aid in different sectors against relevant so- ventions are taking place and tag communities that should be cio-economic indicators. “One of the benefits [of geocoding] benefiting. Dynamic mapping enables users to track where aid is that it makes the distribution of aid visible by using maps funds are going compared with local political and socio-eco- and it can help decision-makers and other stakeholders to nomic indicators such as corruption, literacy and poverty rates. support areas where there is less official development assis- Finally, building buy-in and capacity among donors, govern- tance… all from the study of maps,” says an official from ment officials, and citizens is critical if geospatial development the Ministry of Finance in Tanzania, requesting anonymity. data is to be produced, maintained and used in the long-term. In 2012, AidData joined forces with USAID’s Higher Edu- The need for granular aid information cation Solutions Network to develop a center of excellence fo- Information on development inputs (who is spending what and cused on creating geospatial data, tools and research for better where) and outputs (the results of those investments on the targeting, coordination and evaluation of development assis- ground) should be a powerful asset in delivering better govern- tance. In its first year of operation, the AidData Center for De- ance and more effective aid for developing countries. However, velopment Policy worked with local governments, donors and more often than not, donors and governments find themselves civil society representatives in five countries (Nepal, Uganda, inundated with information buried in copious documents or Senegal, Haiti, Timor-Leste) to develop and mainstream geoc- frustrated by data silos between organisations or departments. oded development finance data in advocacy, decision-making For instance, in Honduras, the Ministry of Planning and Exter- and research. In each of these countries, AidData partnered nal Cooperation, had all information in a spreadsheet and as it with the government and USAID country mission to produce kept introducing new fields, the data became too big to handle a comprehensive set of geocoded data on aid project locations after a while. The Ministry of Finance in Malawi faced a similar across multiple donors that will be publicly available via aid- problem — aid information was captured in excel and it was data.org — an online data portal capturing development fi- difficult to track where the money was going. The government nance activities form 90 funding agencies worldwide. Aid was looking for an easy tool to track development finance and it Management Fellows embedded within ministries of finance approached AidData partner Development Gateway. built political will and local capacity to not only use the data An important facet of AidData’s geocoding approach is and tools, but also to curate and maintain them. that it is demand-driven. As Choi explains, “We don’t do In Nepal, for example, AidData partnered with the national one-off data collection exercises but work with governments government, AusAid and USAID to pinpoint over 21,500 ge- based on long-standing partnerships with ministries of fi- ographic locations representing all donor-funded aid projects nance to embed geocoding into their processes”. in the country. This information is now accessible via aiddata. While AidData is willing to work in both middle- and org and Nepal’s Aid Management Platform following public low- income countries, thus far it has had the greatest traction release in June 2013. Over 400 government and donor officials in countries where aid is a large proportion of their GDP. As were trained on using and maintaining the geocoded aid data. Brad Parks describes, “We have seen the highest levels of de- AidData cultivates demand among civil society, universi- mand for high-resolution, geospatial aid data among countries ties and others through an initial scoping trip to identify key ac- that face major aid management challenges.” These are usu- tors and gauge their interest and commitment to applying geoc- ally underdeveloped countries, and targeting, coordination or oded data for research, impact evaluation, and evidence-based evaluation of this aid money is most difficult in some of these advocacy. Through its Summer Fellows Programme, AidData places. The opportunity to work with AidData and develop deploys student researchers to provide training in geocoding
Geospatial World February 2014 / 65 Source: portal.mof.gov.np
structive dialogue with international donors to bolster aid to its Far Western Development Region and adhere to a set of minimum project thresholds. USAID Nepal has also integrated this geocoded development finance data into the preparation of its Country Development Cooperation Strategy. In Malawi, officials from the Ministry of Finance have also begun to realise the benefits of the geocoded aid data in their work as they now have real-time information on aid flows. The government mainly uses the information to do budgeting, This screenshot from Nepal’s public Aid Management Platform compares resource management and future projections. The government subnational aid investments in education versus literacy levels in Nepal. has also seen substantial interest among its citizens on mon- and GIS for selected institutions to effectively visualise and itoring the aid flow. Similarly, Honduras is looking forward analyse the geocoded data most relevant to their work. to the completion of its geocoding project so that such data In 2013, 11 student researchers embedded with local uni- can be made public and the government can plan on how and versities, civil society organisations and research institutes where to go ahead with its development work. in five countries to build awareness of the value of geocoded A growing number of donors and governments are pub- data and tools. Nisha Krishnan, based in Dili, Timor-Leste, lishing open aid information and geocoding their develop- worked with the USAID to assess how geospatial analysis ment portfolios. Simultaneously, improvements in Internet could be used to support their ‘Climate Change Vulnerabil- penetration and the proliferation of mobile phones are en- ity Assessment’. In Uganda, Emily Mahoney trained stake- abling a broader set of development actors, including local holders in the ‘Scaling up Nutrition’ movement to geocode civil society groups, universities and citizens, to access this nutrition projects and integrate this methodology into the spatial data and create their own maps to analyse the funding ‘Renewed Effort against Child Hunger’ mapping initiative. flows. There is growing recognition of the potential of open Mike Hathaway assisted Transparency International-Nepal data to, in the words of USAID Administrator Raj Shah, to incorporate geocoded data into their foreign aid report, “dramatically accelerate progress in development”. while Lindsay Read and Cherie Saulter trained students and But there is still much to be done. Too many donors still faculty in geocoding and GIS at Makerere University. do not publish detailed information on development pro- jects that include geographic locations to the most local lev- Can aid information improve governance? el possible. Development mapping initiatives have not yet The ultimate value of geocoding doesn’t exclusively lie in systematically integrated hyper-local data from citizens. As the location information itself. Data visualisations simpli- private foundations and emerging donors are contributing fy complex data points, convey information with greater an ever-growing share of development assistance, it will be ease and enable people to draw conclusions about patterns of greater importance to integrate these new financial flows they observe. Yet, the potential end users of geocoded data when considering the total resources available to countries may lack awareness of its value or have limited capacity to for planning their development. In the coming years, the de- seamlessly integrate this data within their activities. Given velopment community will need to tackle each one of these the relative newness of these initiatives, it is difficult to say challenges related to spatial information. with certainty if geocoded data does indeed change the way In the meantime, AidData is attempting a few small steps that donors, governments and citizens consume informa- forward. It has developed improved functionalities on aid- tion and make decisions. But the first signs are nevertheless data.org that will enable any user to directly upload and tag encouraging. information on aid projects and locations. It has assembled Tilak Bhandari, an official with Nepal’s Ministry of Fi- the world’s most comprehensive database on Chinese de- nance, provides one poignant example: In generating several velopment assistance to Africa (china.aiddata.org) and will maps for its 2012 Development Cooperation Report, the min- begin geocoding these projects later this year. istry discovered that too many donors were focusing in the Finally, AidData will continue to build the capacity of same geographic areas and sectors, while one of the poorest re- donors, governments and civil society organizations to system- gions of the country was experiencing a shortfall in assistance. atically incorporate geocoding within their work. “We didn’t know about [aid] fragmentation before, [but] now we have evidence,” says Bhandari. The Nepal government was Samantha Custer, Director of Communications & Policy able to use this information to identify gaps and engage in con- Outreach, AidData, [email protected]
66 / Geospatial World February 2014 Feature/Food Security A Thought for Food The UN World Food Programme uses GIS to analyse a wide variety of geographical factors for disaster mitigation and fighting food insecurity around the world. By Jim Baumann
hen the Operation Department of poor growing seasons and years of low crop productions. Emergency Preparedness (ODEP) of the The analyses help the WFP quickly develop intervention United Nations World Food Programme strategies when disaster strikes. (WFP) wanted to understand the higher The World Food Programme (WFP) is the food assis- vulnerabilities among populations living tance branch of the United Nations. Formally established in Win areas prone to natural disasters as part of its work to mit- 1963, the WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian organ- igate disasters and coordinate response operations, it chose isation fighting hunger worldwide. Its primary mission is Esri ArcGIS software. providing food to those who are unable to obtain it for them- Today, the ODEP actively supports emergency relief selves. On an average, the WFP delivers food to more than efforts around the world with GIS analysis. This analysis 90 million people per year, 58 million of whom are children. considers factors such as environmental degradation, food In addition to food security, the WFP works to reduce child insecurity, malnutrition, and the historical occurrences of mortality, improve maternal health, and combat disease. natural disasters. Satellite images are analysed to identify In addition to data acquired from the host country and the data it collects, the WFP obtains regular updates re- garding seasonal food insecurity conditions throughout the world from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Famine Early Warning Systems Network. USAID analyses the data it receives from US agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), United States Geological Survey (USGS), and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), to pro- duce its reports and forecasts, which it then provides to the WFP and other relief agencies.
Managing the Disaster Cycle The four recurrent steps in the disaster cycle are preven- tion, preparedness, response and recovery. Because it is cyclic, there is no actual beginning or end; however, GIS plays a strategic role throughout the entire cycle. “GIS is used extensively in the prevention step of the disaster cycle,” says Andrea Amparore, GIS analyst, ODEP. “Prevention includes the evaluation of man-made features, such as dams and levees, to make sure they can withstand rising floodwater, as well as determining the structural in- tegrity of buildings, the reseeding of hillsides after deforest- Frequency of rural emergency classification 2007-12 in Somalia. ation to reduce mudslides, the evaluation of building codes The World Food Programme obtains regular updates regarding and land-use zones to make sure they meet current safety seasonal food insecurity conditions throughout the world from the US Agency for International Development Famine Early Warning standards, instigating community awareness campaigns Systems Network. to help residents better prepare themselves in the event
68 / Geospatial World February 2014 Vegetation growth deviations for 2011 season and livelihood zones of Mauritania and Mali in Africa of a disaster, and so on. Using GIS throughout this step location of refugee camps, emergency supply depots, and provides management tools for project planning, review, and relief worker staging areas. implementation.” Preparedness includes risk identification and assessment; The Future of GIS at the WFP the development and maintenance of emergency communica- Because GIS is used throughout the WFP, the organisa- tion services; stockpiling essential food supplies, water, and tion decided to implement an enterprise system based on medicine; and the establishment of evacuation routes. “GIS ArcGIS for server technology to better organise and man- is used here in the evaluation and categorisation of potential age its expanding geospatial databases. This has stimulated risks, as well as determining the optimum locations for emer- new projects in the agency and an evaluation by the WFP of gency food stockpiles, the development of evacuation plans, how GIS can be better used by its departments and partners. and determining the optimum routes for refugees if it becomes For example, the WFP’s Vulnerability Analysis and Map- necessary for them to evacuate,” adds Amparore. ping unit recently created the Spatial Information Environ- Response requires real-time monitoring for disaster re- ment in an effort to increase access to original and derived lief efforts such as resource allocation, the status of trans- spatial information within the WFP and its partners. In ad- portation routes, and the relocation of civilian populations. dition, it is working with FAO to develop an ISO-standard GIS is used for forecasting the impact of imminent natural metadata clearinghouse to enable greater compatibility and disasters, tracking human and livestock migration, moni- promote the sharing of spatial data between agencies. toring the effectiveness of relief operations, and allocating “Standardisation is the key to the continued growth of resources. GIS at the WFP,” concludes Amparore. “This will allow The recovery step includes the provision of temporary us to expand our analytical capabilities and adopt an even relief, such as food and shelter for disaster victims, as well greater scientific approach to data analysis. I also think the as damage assessment, repair, and reconstruction. “GIS is involvement of local universities, when possible, would help ideal for logistics management and is used to determine facilitate our work and provide the host country with a great- where resources are needed so that recovery efforts can be er sense of involvement in our relief efforts.” prioritised,” says Amparore. It is also used to specify where distribution stations should be positioned; evaluate the con- Jim Baumann, Writer, Esri dition of existing humanitarian corridors; and establish the [email protected]
Geospatial World February 2014 / 69 The ICA ngle
Cartography and the technological revolution Rapid advances in technologies have opened a new chapter in map-making as millions have taken to this age-old craft. By Georg Gartner
ny individual with modest computing after the data has been acquired through the Internet. skills located anywhere on earth can Real-time data handling and visualisation are other signifi- create maps today and use it for almost cant developments in addition to location-based services any purpose. In this new map-making and mobile cartography augmented reality. paradigm, users are often present at the While the above advances have enabled significant Alocation of interest and produce maps that address instan- progress on the design and implementation of new ways of taneous needs. Cartographic data may be digitally and map production over the past decade, many cartographic wirelessly delivered in finalised form to the device in the principles remain unchanged; the most important one being user’s hands or he may derive the requested visualisation that maps are an abstraction of reality. Visualisation of from downloaded data in situ. Rapid advances in technol- selected information means that some features present in ogies have enabled this revolution in map-making by the reality are depicted more prominently than the others while millions. One such prominent advance includes the possi- many features might not even be depicted at all. Abstract bility of deriving maps very quickly, almost immediately reality makes a map powerful as it helps to understand and interpret very complex situations. Abstraction is essential in all stages of geospatial information dissemination. Cartographic depictions allow us to understand situations on the earth, even if they are very complex. Cartographic technologies, including innovative map derivation, crowdsourcing and neocartography techniques and location-based services, are available in a ubiquitous manner to everybody now. Maps are produced to enable decision-makers, experts and the general public alike to understand the kind and levels of a particular spatial situation or spatial topic. Modern cartog- raphy enables the general public to participate in modelling and visualising their neighbourhood on a voluntary basis. Modern cartography also helps to quickly disseminate spatial information, even if it is crucial, for example in case of disaster management. The launch of Google Maps and Earth brought cartography to the common man Cartography is most relevant in this sense. Without
70 / Geospatial World February 2014 Modern cartography enables the general public to participate in visualising and modelling their neighbourhood on a voluntary basis. For instance, National Geographic offers interactive maps through MapMaker Interactive maps we would be ‘spatially blind’. Knowledge about in maps, mapping and cartography are working together spatial relations and location of objects are most impor- on an international level. This is exactly the role of the tant for handling disasters and crisis situations or simply International Cartographic Association (ICA). It is the to be able to make good decisions. Cartography is also world’s authoritative body for cartography and GI Science most contemporary, as new and comprising of national and affiliate innovative technologies have members. The association encourages an important impact into what Knowledge about every nation in the world to join the big cartographers are doing. spatial relations family of cartography and GI science. Maps can be derived Companies, universities and other bodies automatically from geodata and location of involved in cartography and GI Sciences acquisition methods such as laser join ICA as affiliate members, and the scanning, remote sensing or sensor objects are most numbers are growing. networks. Smart models of geodata important for han- I am happy to announce, that we can be built allowing in-depth will use the opportunity of this quar- analysis of structures and patterns. dling disasters and terly column in Geospatial World to A whole range of presentation forms inform you about the ongoing activities are available nowadays, from maps crisis situations or in the domain of modern cartography. on mobile phones to geoinformation to be able to make presented as augmented reality. Georg Gartner, President, In such a situation, it is of high good decisions International Cartographic Association, importance that those interested [email protected]
Geospatial World February 2014 / 71 Picture This
Hell hath no fury like Nature scorned! A NASA image shows the polar vortex blanketing the US Midwest, gripping parts of the country in a deep freeze. More than half of the population of the United States were under a weather alert as some of the coldest temperatures in decades swept the country in mid-January. An aerial picture (inset) shows a frozen Chicago as temperatures dropped to a 30-year low. Aerial picture of icy cold Chicago, USA.
72 / Geospatial World February 2014 geoSMART Planet resources + infrastructure & You
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February 19-21 February 20-21 February 25-26 February 26 Cloud Computing for DoD and Govt USGIF Commercial SAR Workshop Ghana Geospatial Forum 2014 Australia – GeoNext Washington DC, USA Stuttgart, Germany Accra, Ghana Sydney, Australia www.cloudcomputingevent.com/ www.csarwg.org/index.html www.ghgeospatialforum.org/ www.geonext.com.au/ February
March 4-8 March 5-6 March 9-13 March 16-20 CONEXPO-CON/AGG Linking Geospatial Data Esri International Developer Summit Geospatial Conference Las Vegas, USA UK California in Tunis www.conexpoconagg.com/ http://www.w3.org/2014/03/lgd/ www.goo.gl/MB3bkL Tunisia www.gct-tunisia.com/
March 17-20 March 11-12 March 29 - April 2
March Asia Mining Congress Malaysia Geospatial Forum 17th Annual AAAE GIS Conference Singapore Malaysia California www.terrapinn.com/2014/ www.malaysiageospatialforum.org/ www.events.aaae.org/sites/140305/ asia-mining-congress/index.stm index.cfm
April 7 -9 April 13-17 April 14-17 April 15 -17 Australia - Locate14 Conference GEOINT 2014 SPAR International Annual European Navigation Canberra, Australia Florida, USA USA Conference 2014 www.goo.gl/i2fgMN www.goo.gl/CW3hRU www.sparpointgroup.com/interna- Rotterdam, The Netherlands tional/ www.enc-gnss2014.com/
April 16 - 18 April 21-23 April 22-25 April 27– May 2 April Interexpo GEO-Siberia-2014 Instituion of Geospatial and Esri Petroleum GIS Conference European Geosciences Union Novosibirsk, Russia Remote Sensing Malaysia Conference USA General Assembly 2014 www.expo-geo.ru/event/27_Interex- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia www.goo.gl/fsa7kc Vienna, Austria po-GEO-Siberia-2013 www.igrsm.com/igrsm2014/ www.egu2014.eu/
May 5 -8 May 5 -9 May 12 -14 May 12 -15 GIS for Transportation Symposium Geospatial World Forum Washington GIS Conference AUVSI Unmanned Vermont Switzerland Washington, USA Systems 2014 www.gis-t.org/ www.geospatialworldforum.org/ www.goo.gl/BmEl6W Florida, USA www.auvsishow.org/auvsi2014/ public/enter.aspx
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June 2 - 5 June 12 -13 June 14 -21 June 16 -21 HxGN LIVE Conference 2014 GeoIntelligenceIndia 2014 International Conference on Cartog- XXV FIG International Las Vegas, USA New Delhi, India raphy & GIS Congress 2014 www.hxgnlive.com/ www.geointelligenceindia.org/ Bulgaria Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia June www.iccgis2014.cartography-gis. www.fig.net/fig2014/ com/Home.html
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